Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to welcome the city of Lankaran, Azerbaijan as a new sister city to a city in my district, Monterey, California.

Lankaran joins six other cities that have sister-city arrangements with Monterey. The other cities are: Tainan City, Taiwan; Nanao, Japan; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Trapani, Italy; Kusadasi, Turkey; and Lerida, Spain.

Lankaran, located on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea offers great potential for a thriving tourism industry for Azerbaijan. As a tourist mecca of its own Monterey can offer a great example of best practices in tourism of Lankaran.

I hope this new relationship will foster good will and friendship between two wonderful cities and two countries allied in peace.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the career of Churchill ``Church'' Bragaw Grimes, who on August 31 retires as the Fisheries Ecology Division Director of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, California. The Fisheries Ecology Division of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center provides research focused on Pacific Coast groundfish and Pacific Salmon. Results of their research help to manage fisheries as well as threatened and endangered species in the area. Churchill has made very important contributions to resource conservation and management as the Director of the Fisheries Ecology Division.

Church has been active in the field of fishery science and management for over 40 years. He received both his B.S. and M.S. in biology from the East Carolina University at Greenville, North Carolina and his Ph.D. in Marine Sciences from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1977 he became the Assistant Professor of Marine Fisheries at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1983. The following year he joined the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) as a Fishery Ecologist in Panama City, Florida. He has since been with the NMFS serving as Chief (acting) Resource Survey Division in Pascagoula, Mississippi; Leader, Fishery Ecology Investigations and Laboratory Director in Panama City; and Laboratory Director and Fisheries Ecology Division Director in Santa Cruz.

Some of Church's many contributions to the field of fishery science and management are his countless publications from his many years of ``hands on'' research in the lab and at sea. He has received numerous honors and awards including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Bronze Medal in 1996 and again in 2006.

Mr. Speaker, I know I speak for the whole House as I commend Churchill ``Church'' Bragaw Grimes for all he has done and all he will undoubtedly continue to do. I extend my most sincere thanks and warmest wishes for his success and much happiness in his retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the Monterey County Fair on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. The mission of the Fair, to create, produce and offer quality events in their unique setting of 22 oak-studded acres, has educated, entertained and inspired our people for 75 years.

The Monterey County Fairground is a State owned Multi-Use Facility, generating $22.9 million annually in spending activity over its history and contributing 300 full-time and part-time jobs. This year's theme, chosen by the 7th District Agricultural Association, will be ``Horse'n Around'' and was inspired by the artwork of artist Jo Mora. This summer, from August 31st to September 5th, livestock demonstrations, displays and auctions will recall and promote the rich agricultural heritage and diverse resources of Monterey County. The money raised from the auctions goes towards scholarships for local students and includes the participation of over 5,000 of Monterey County's youth through the Future Farmers of America and 4-H programs.

The Monterey County Fair prides itself on being an inclusive environment where everyone in Monterey County can join in the festivities. Seniors' Day, Kids' Day, Special Friends' Day and Military Day ensure that citizens of all abilities and income levels can participate and enjoy the fair.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to hold up the Monterey County Fair as a model for other community and cultural events. On behalf of the whole House, I acknowledge the valuable contributions of the Monterey County Fair, and invite the community to join the celebration of its 75th Anniversary. May their continued success inspire many more generations to celebrate our agricultural and cultural heritage.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the career of my good friend, Terrance Duncan, who is retiring from the Superior Court of California of Monterey County on August 17, 2011. Terry honorably served as a judicial officer in the Monterey County Courts for over 29 years. We shared the Monterey Courthouse as a workplace before he was sworn in as a Court Commissioner.

Since Terry's appointment as a Municipal Court Commissioner in 1982, he worked tirelessly to help serve justice in Monterey County. In 1995 he was elected as a Municipal Court Judge and elevated to the Superior Court in 2000. As a judge Terry presided over thousands of criminal and civil cases in Salinas, Monterey, and King City. From 2003 to 2005 he served as the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court.

Terry's dedication to the teaching of the legal system is inspiring. He served as an instructor for the California Center for Judicial Education and Research where he taught judicial skills and ethics to both new and experienced Judges. Throughout California, Terry educated students in places like the California Judicial College, the Stanford Law School Trial Advocacy Program and the Monterey College of Law Community Education Program.

Terry has also been an active member of the legal community by being a part of many prestigious organizations. He served as an Officer and Director of the California Judges' Association, was President of the California Court Commissioners' Association, and he was also the President of the Board of Trustees of the Monterey College of Law.

Not only is Terry an active member of his professional community but he has also been heavily involved with helping the community of Monterey County. He was the founder in 1989 and President of Monterey County Sober Graduation which is an all-volunteer organization that introduced the concept of sober graduation activities for high school seniors. Terry was also President of the Monterey Kiwanis Club and director of the Sports Car Racing Association of the Monterey Peninsula (SCRAMP). SCRAMP is an organization that makes major donations to charities each year. Terry also served as a Board President of the Beacon House alcohol recovery home in Pacific Grove, along with numerous other community activities serving those in need.

Mr. Speaker, I know I speak for the whole House as I commend the contribution Terry has made to Monterey County's justice system. This is not the end of a career of service to the legal system for I know that Terrance will continue to serve the County of Monterey and the legal community in other capacities. Our region is fortunate to have the quality of leadership that Judge Terrance Duncan exemplifies.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Maestra Marin Alsop, whose visionary and charismatic leadership has made the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California our nation's global leader in the creation and presentation of contemporary music for orchestra.

Born in New York City, Marin Alsop attended Yale University and received her Master's Degree from The Juilliard School and was the first woman to be awarded the Koussevitsky Conducting Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center where she became a protege of Leonard Bernstein. She has gone on to make history as the first woman to lead a major American orchestra; the first conductor to receive a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (``genius award''); and the first artist to win both Gramophone's Artist of the Year and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor's Award in the same season. Other prizes include a European Women of Achievement Award, a Classical BRIT Award for Best Female Artist, the Royal Philharmonic Society's BBC Radio 3 Listeners Award, Musical America's Conductor of the Year, and induction as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Described by the New York Times as ``a conductor with a vision of what an American orchestra could be in the 21st century,'' Marin Alsop has made Cabrillo a place where composers, musicians, audiences, and the community interact, and where everyone contributes to the process of modern symphonic music making. By the force of her genius and her genuineness, the Festival has become a creative gathering like none other in the world.

A Music Director of vision and distinction who passionately believes that ``music has the power to change lives,'' Marin Alsop has made the Festival a creative force on the international stage. No longer just a presenter of new works, Cabrillo is now an originator of new works, with more and more composers choosing the Festival for the first performance of their newest works. This season there will be a historic seven world premieres, each written to celebrate her special 20th anniversary season.

Mr. Speaker, for all that she has done for living composers and the future of symphonic music as a vibrant American art form, and for all that she will undoubtedly achieve in the years ahead, I extend my most sincere appreciation and congratulations to Marin Alsop on the occasion of her 20th anniversary as music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to clarify a mischaracterization of the administrative costs of the supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly known as WIC.

It's interesting, you can come down here to the floor or speak in committee, and we are protected as Members of Congress to say anything we want. It isn't required that everything we say is factually correct. Sometimes those mischaracterizations, misstatements get into the record. And in this case, the complaint or the statement in subcommittee and full

committee and even in debate here on the floor of the Agriculture appropriations bill, it was asserted that the administrative costs in this program are up to 40 percent of the total cost of WIC, this is a misstatement of fact, although it was included in the report language and it was adopted by the committee.

So I come today to point out that the 40 percent administrative cost claimed by the majority is based on selective data from a 2008 Brookings Institute report. It didn't come from the Department of Agriculture, which administers the program. The Brookings report collapsed several legislative mandated nonmonetary programs, including the education of nutrition, the requirement that we support and inform people on how to do proper breast feeding, other client services, issues like health care referrals, even immunization screenings, these were counted as administrative costs when they are mandated by us in Congress to be carried out. They are programmatic costs, and it wasn't proper for the Brookings report to include those as administrative costs.

Breast feeding, nutrition education, and immunization screening are vital programs which improve birth outcomes and reduce the incidence of health problems for WIC participants. They should not be categorized as administrative costs for the purpose of budgeting.

So today, I would like to point out in a recent letter to our Subcommittee on Agriculture Appropriations, of which I am the ranking member, from the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary Vilsack, and I will include this letter at the end of my comments today, he notes that the food and nutrition service delivers its program management and actual administrative costs at a steady 9.09 percent rate, far less than the 40 percent purported in the Brookings Institute report and included in the committee report.

WIC is effective in improving the health of pregnant women, new mothers and their infants. I feel it is important to clarify that the WIC program is meeting its mission. It is meeting the law to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children who are at nutrition risk by providing nutritional food and supplemental diets and information on healthy eating and referrals to other health care services.

As Members of Congress, we should not do the program any further disservice by erroneous figures being included in the report. So today, Mr. Speaker, I insert in the Record the letter from Secretary Vilsack pointing this out and to make the record clear that the WIC program is indeed being administered very soundly and fiscally conservatively.

U.S. Department of

Agriculture,

Washington, DC, July 14, 2011.

Hon. Sam Farr,

Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural

Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related

Agencies, House of Representatives, Longworth House

Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Farr: Thank you for your work on behalf of

the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) appropriations for

fiscal year (FY) 2012. I appreciate the difficult decisions

and choices that were before you and the Committee.

As identified in the Statement of Administration Policy,

the Administration has serious concerns with H.R. 2112;

however, I wanted to weigh in specifically on what I perceive

as misstatements regarding administrative costs for the

Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and

Children (WIC). I understand that during full committee

debate and on page 43 of the committee report, selected data

from a 2008 Brookings Institute report were referenced,

giving the impression that administrative costs in the WIC

Program are over 40 percent of Federal expenditures for the

program. The true figure is much lower.

Beyond simply providing assistance in the form of

supplemental food benefits, WIC provides low-income mothers,

infants, and children with other legislatively mandated non-

monetary program benefits, including nutrition education,

breastfeeding support, and other client services such as

healthcare referrals and immunization screening, which

improve birth outcomes and reduce the incidence of health

problems for WIC participants. The Brookings Institute report

collapses these important additional benefits under the

category of administrative costs. However, these

legislatively mandated program benefits provided to

participants should not be classified as administrative

costs.

For reference, I asked USDA's Food and Nutrition Service to

provide me with a breakdown of the Federal cost of food

benefits, non-monetary program benefits and administrative

expenses for FY 2010. I am sharing this information with you

to correct the record and so that you can share it with your

colleagues:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Percentage of

Category Obligations obligations ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Supplemental Food Benefits........ $4,561,570,027 70.44% Nutrition Services and Admin. (NSA):

Additional Benefits:

Nutrition Education....... 418,437,331 6.46%

Breastfeeding Support..... 149,133,594 2.30%

Other Client Services..... 758,015,711 11.70%

Program Management............ 588,984,767 9.09%

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the dawn of the Republic of South Sudan, the world's newest nation. While this is certainly a cause for celebration, the road to peace will not be an easy one for this war-torn region of Africa. The legacy of fifty years of violence, two million lives lost, and deep-rooted ethnic tensions will not vanish overnight.

This is especially true in the Nuba Mountains, part of the disputed border region of Southern Kordofan. While this volatile area remains under the control of Sudan, it is home to many communities that support the newly formed South Sudan. Sudanese forces from the north are accused of carrying out extensive aerial attacks targeted at pro-South Sudan groups. These attacks have displaced some 73,000 people, including 2,000 in a recent bombing campaign. Media reports also suggest targeted civilian killings and extrajudicial executions of suspected dissidents.

This violence must stop. The citizens of the Nuba Mountains, and all the citizens of Sudan and South Sudan, deserve to live in freedom, security, and stability. The history of genocide, war, and turmoil that has plagued this region of Africa does not need to be its future. As Sudan marks a momentous separation into two independent countries, let us embrace the possibility and hope that this new beginning can bring. I urge all my colleagues here in Congress to use their voice and their vote to promote enduring stability for the Nuba Mountains and all of Sudan and South Sudan. Peace cannot wait a moment longer.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Last night, I was in a town hall meeting in California, and it was very clear. It was a bipartisan whole group of people, and what they told us very truly is, Stop playing games. They know that the United States Congress, since 1940, has voted over 90 times--90 times--to raise the debt and never once with a game, never once with preconditions of, Oh, we've got to do this. We've got to do that.

You guys are ruining this country's fiscal future by lighting a fire to our fiscal sanity and to our reputation. You want to take down our Constitution by requiring a two-thirds vote. You should look before you leap. California did this by initiative in 1990. That State has had a two-thirds vote locked up. It's impossible to get it out of any fiscal crisis, and it has dropped from the sixth wealthiest economy in the world.

Do you want to follow that lead by amending the U.S. Constitution and locking in all these tax laws? You're just freezing in every single impropriety that's in the Tax Code.

These people in my town hall meeting said, Stop playing games. They said it because they don't think you should put conditionality on it. Vote for a clean debt limit. I did. Not one of you did it. Not one Republican voted for that. Shame on you. Shame on you for playing fire with the United States Constitution. Shame on you on the cut, cap, and ruin of the United States.

Vote ``no.''

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, I voted for H. Res. 268 because I believe in the bill's underlying premise of a negotiated two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bring enduring stability to the region. I have always used my voice and my vote to promote peace in the Middle East. Too many lives have been lost and too much violence has been wrought to do anything else. Citizens throughout the region deserve better.

However, my vote is not without reservations about the provisions in this resolution. At this moment of incredible regional volatility, we should be encouraging the President to deploy America's full diplomatic capacity to pursue peace in the region not discourage recognition of a Palestinian state, as this resolution does. We should be encouraging the promotion of stability and dialogue with all parties involved, not discouraging assistance to the Palestinians, as this resolution does. And we should be calling on every actor involved to be a serious broker for peace.

I just traveled to the Middle East and saw firsthand the need for a sustainable two-state solution. The question I came away with is: What can be done to bring a just and lasting peace? While I hope that this resolution can bring us closer to a peaceful solution, I fear that it leaves too many hard questions unanswered and too many issues unaddressed.

While I voted for this resolution, I will also continue to support a constructive dialogue that can bring this conflict to a permanent end. The time for peace is now. We cannot wait a moment longer.

Mr. Speaker, I have never supported the Afghanistan War. It has cost us 1,650 American lives. And the cost of those lost lives can't be measured. But this war has also cost us $444 billion. And that can be measured.

Where we spend our money reflects our national values. And we spend $228,000 a minute on this war. So every minute of every day, we are telling the world that we value war above all else.

But what about peace? What if we spent $228,000 a minute on peace? If we did that for just one day, we could send 6,566 Peace Corps Volunteers to serve America in the name of peace. Or we could feed 6.6 million school children for a year.

Those are things worth valuing. Those are things worth fighting for. So, I urge my colleagues to vote to bring our brave women and men back home. To bring our money back in line with our values.

To bring peace back now.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor World Refugee Day and the 60th anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. While we are commemorating World Refugee Day all week, the plight of refugees continues day in and day out. As I speak, there are some 15.4 million refugees around the world. But, there's another dimension to this humanitarian crisis that I want to highlight. Worldwide, there are an estimated 27.5 million internally displaced people who have fled their homes, but remain within their country's borders. So, as we mark World Refugee Day, we cannot forget internally displaced people who are refugees within their own countries.

In total, there are 43 million refugees and displaced people globally which is roughly the

entire population of Colombia. In fact, in Colombia, our hemispheric neighbor, there are an estimated 4 million internally displaced people, equivalent to the entire population of Los Angeles. Pakistan has nearly 2 million refugees, and Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq all have over a million displaced people each.

Displaced persons are a national security issue as much as a humanitarian crisis that violates basic human rights. This spring, I hosted Congressional briefings with Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Alexander Aleinikoff, the Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees. I commend the work of the U.N. High Commissioner and the many organizations--large and small--that are on the frontlines providing basic relief and security to displaced communities. And I will do everything I can to inform my colleagues about this important work.

But, while immediate relief is essential, we also must tackle the root causes of conflict and poverty that continue to drive up the number of displaced people. We cannot be a just and peaceful world with so many living without basic human rights and protections. So, this week, and every week, I will continue to use my voice and vote to end this humanitarian crisis and bring justice, security, and enduring peace to the millions of displaced people around the world.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2021, the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act. Since the beginning of the 112th Congress, my Republican colleagues have been relentless in their attempts to weaken offshore drilling regulations and to preserve wasteful and unnecessary subsidies to the most profitable oil corporations in the world. While Americans are facing serious pain at the pump, in the first quarter of 2011, the five biggest oil companies have made a total combined profit of $35 billion. Yet, as these companies break record profits, the Republican leadership insists that we continue to hand these companies billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies.

H.R. 2021 is just another blatant attack on human health and the environment in an attempt to shield outrageous Big Oil profits. This bill seeks to evade Clean Air Act standards intended to protect our air and health by allowing the oil companies to pollute as much as they want from their offshore operations. Secondly, this anti-environment piece of legislation would block the right of California and other states to enforce more rigorous emissions standards on vessels servicing an offshore operation. It seems ironic that my colleagues who are arguing against big government now want to take away states' rights to protect their residents from dirty local air.

I strongly support the need to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. However, H.R. 2021 is not the answer. I am extremely disappointed that my Republican colleagues continue to dismiss renewable sources of energy as part of the solution. The renewable energy sector has the potential to support hundred of thousands of jobs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The number of jobs in the solar industry, for example, doubled from 2009 to 2010. However, in the Fiscal Year 2012 Energy and Water Subcommittee Appropriations bill, Republicans have proposed draconian cuts to programs that focus on energy efficiency research and renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind. The proposed cut of $1.895 billion to the Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program is simply unacceptable. These cuts to alternative energy programs and the numerous pro-Big Oil bills, such as H.R. 2021, that have been introduced in the 112th Congress indicate that the Republicans do not support a comprehensive solution to rising gas prices, ending America's foreign dependence on oil, and creating jobs.

My fellow Democrats attempted to improve H.R. 2021 by offering ten different amendments, but the Republicans rejected each and every one, including an amendment that would maintain California's ability to set its own emissions standards. Unfortunately this Republican desired top- down approach will degrade air quality along the coast of California, causing health costs to soar with increasing incidence of respiratory illnesses.

Madam Chair, the quality of the air we breathe and the health of my constituents is of utmost importance. For this reason, I do not support this legislation, and I voted ``no'' on H.R. 2021.

I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I rise with great concern for this amendment. It wants to reduce about 5.8 percent across the board. Our problem is that we have dealt a really bad deal. The bill that we brought to the floor--and we cut some last night across the board--is $5 billion, or 23 percent below what the President requested. The President put together all of the asks, and as you know, OMB scrubs those things. And we're always very critical of the President's requests, sometimes because they're so low. Nonetheless, this is 23 percent below what the President requested. It's 14 percent below what we enacted last year.

We in the committee last year, under Rosa DeLauro, when we were in the majority, we didn't have the impact on farm programs, particularly the environmental programs, that the cuts do this year. It's below the 2010-enacted level, and it's actually below the 2008-enacted level.

You know, people use these terms very loosely, ``below a level.'' But think of it in your own personal income. Think about what the costs of life were for you in 2008 versus now. And I would submit that almost in every case, your water bill, your cable bill, your garbage bill, your utility bill, certainly the price of gasoline now, is a lot higher than it was in 2008. Nonetheless, you've got the same amount of money. So it's going to have a draconian impact, this amendment and the underlying bill, on the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.

So I'm concerned. I think the gentleman is well intended to protect the programs that I care a great deal about. But I think the 5.8 percent across-the-board cut on top of what we've already cut is just too much.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I rise with great concerns about this amendment, because I don't think it does what the author intends it to do. All it does is say none of the funds made available in this act--this act, not other acts, not other bills that the chair and ranking member pass in their committees--can be used for countercyclical payments to upland cotton producers. There is nothing in here about Brazil. This doesn't affect Brazil. But this does affect a lot of cotton growers in a lot of States, including the State of California, which is one of the leading cotton-producing States.

If this amendment was constructive, I think you would find a lot more support for it, but I don't find it being very constructive because it only limits it to cuts in this bill and not to what the underlying problems are all about, which is covered in many other acts than this one.

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Reclaiming my time, with all due respect, I don't think the Agriculture Committee created the Brazilian problem. It was not the committee's act that created it. It was what the Brazilians did in their ability to become a major agricultural production country. And they are going after production in other countries. They have got connections with their government much closer between producers and government than we have here. They are buying out companies. They are going to really try to affect farm prices in the United States. I will tell you, the next place they are going to go after is specialty crops.

So I am not a big fan, as you know. I spoke last night with concerns about getting these payment limitations down and to essentially trying to find a better program that is not so costly to the taxpayers. But you don't do anything beneficial with this money, you just cut it. And I am here to do things using money, taxpayers' money, to do the wise thing.

It doesn't affect the outcome at all. It just penalizes certain people that happen to be in the cotton business. And I don't think that I want to support an amendment that isn't constructive.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word.

I rise in opposition to this amendment.

It doesn't do any of the things that the author talked about. It's a one-sentence bill. This is a legal bill. We are here as lawmakers. It says that each amount made available by this act other than the amount required to be made available by provision of law, which is the one part that Mr. Kingston just talked about, is hereby reduced by 5 percent.

That's all it says. There is nothing about accountability. The accountability goes on before our committee. That's what we do. We go over every item in the USDA's and FDA's budgets and in a public process where there is input and give-and-take. We do the scrutiny every year. That's what the Appropriations Committee is all about. It makes good press releases to get up here and say that, if you cut, squeeze and trim, government is going to get a lot better; but then they don't practice it in their own offices or in their own lifestyles. They just demand that, by just cutting out money, people who give services to people can't give those services.

So this amendment doesn't do anything that the author talks about except to whack a budget that was already whacked. It was whacked by the allocation given to us. As I pointed out, it's $5 billion less. It's almost 23 percent less than what the President requested. It's 14 percent below what Congress enacted last year. It's 26 percent below what we enacted in 2010. It's even below what we enacted in 2008. Last night, we cut across the board. We did what this amendment does, in a very small proportion; but we used that money beneficially to adjust for the WIC program. So just whacking it across the board by 5 percent isn't going to cause any good for anybody, and I oppose the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to the amendment, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, look, if you like dirty air, you will love this amendment. If you like dirty fuel, you will love this amendment.

What this provision does is it strikes the requirement in law that says to the government, which is a big purchaser of fuel, look, don't buy dirty fuel. Buy something that is clean. I mean, that's what we're trying to do is stimulate clean air, fuel efficiency, alternative fuels. This strikes us down. This is going back to the old smokestack, fill the air full of dirty air. This goes back to all the traditional people that just don't like the fact that there's competition out there and that the Federal Government has to purchase that competition. I don't understand why in a competitive world, where fuel and efficiency and engine development, where we're going to have to lead that or have our clock cleaned, this is exactly what creates markets for that.

You look at venture capital, you look at all these people that go in and put private risk capital out. Then they have got to have a market. And fortunately, the government tries to be that market, whether we're buying healthy foods for children, whether we're buying food for our troops, whether we're trying to encourage alternative fuels, as we have under this program where the Navy planes have found a proven alternative to traditional aviation fuel that they've tested in supersonic speed jets.

This is a program that tells the American ingenuity, Get out there and invent something. Because guess what, if you invent it, we, as a purchaser of cleaner and better standards, are going to be your market. And this amendment just wipes that all out. It's really back to dirty smokestacks, dirty air, and no competition and no ability for America to succeed in the future.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski).

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

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, this is the kind of program that I think Mr. Flake pointed out that you wonder why we use taxpayer moneys to market American agriculture abroad, and you say, well, we don't need to do that. As he pointed out, he pointed out a couple of great big companies that take advantage of it.

But guess what? In this legislation we carve out so that the small businesses can take advantage of this. And why do we do that? I don't know how much you see in the advertising that goes on to buy products from other countries, but remember the Juan Valdez coffee ad for Colombian coffee, ``Wake up and smell the coffee''? Guess what? That was subsidized by the Colombian Government. It was very, very effective. Coffee prices actually went down and they lost their ability because it cost them about $40 million a year to do that advertising.

What we have created in the United States is a matching program saying, you put up your money first, put up the private sector money, and we will match it, and we carve out and protect it.

And I'm just looking. California has a lot of congressional districts. You wouldn't think that districts in San Francisco or Los Angeles--we have 53 Members of Congress from California. There's only four congressional districts in California that don't take advantage of this program. I would imagine those are in the middle of Los Angeles. Because there are companies in it--and I can go through all of them. A lot of them are very small. In my county alone, we have Soy Vay, for example. Soy Vay, the sauce. That's a husband and wife company. They take advantage by putting some of their money up and then they get to advertise. I don't know what countries they choose to advertise in. They can't advertise their product per se. They have to advertise the generic of it. So you don't sell Sunkist oranges, you sell: You should buy more California oranges.

It's an easy program to attack, but when you get down to managing in a global market and world competition, this stuff makes sense. As long as other countries are going to do it to us to stay competitive, we've got to do it to them. I think our way of doing it protects the small producer, more than anybody else, and allows them to get--we do this in tourism promotion all the time. We just passed a bill to advertise United States abroad. We have a Tourism Promotion Board to do that. We're going to have to be globally competitive. And this is one of the programs that allows us to be globally competitive.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I know we've been here almost 25 hours of debate. I appreciate the open rule and the fact that we've had a huge debate. I personally would like to thank you and all the staff. I wore my Father's Day tie for you because I know your children are in town and you've been spending a lot of time here on the floor, and I'd like to wish you a happy Father's Day.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I think the amendment is well intended. I think the author is well intended. Rural America is hurting. Rural America is really under a depression. We have not done a very good job of having a rural strategy for America.

I applaud Secretary Vilsack for trying to pull together programs to invest in rural America and make sure that the different agencies in the Federal Government are working in collaboration. And I think this amendment addresses some of those issues, not in a collaborative way but just in putting more money into rural America. But unfortunately, that good intent is offset by the evil done in taking it out of the foreign ag account. And I can't support the amendment for that.

I appreciate my good friend from Oregon's (Mr. Blumenauer) sentiments. And as ranking member of the House Ag Appropriations Subcommittee, I am a strong supporter of these conservation programs used both in Oregon and in my State of California. And I am distressed by the proposed cuts to these programs.

I would like to point out that the Farm Bureau also opposes large cuts to the important working lands program and the Environment Quality Incentives Program. I find it especially disappointing that these funding levels are low enough that the USDA will have to break current contracts. That is an unfair result for our farmers and ranchers who have counted on the support and technical assistance for the year ahead.

The funding levels for the 2008 farm bill were carefully negotiated, and it is frustrating to me and to many others to see the mandatory funding for conservation programs decrease so drastically because this bill was given such a low allocation.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

It's very interesting that your colleague from Arizona (Mr. Gosar) just a minute ago was trying to add money to this account because of the catastrophe in rural America. This Rural Housing Assistance Grants Program is primarily to repair very low-income rural housing. This account was increased from the request of the President by the committee. The effect of this amendment would be to knock it back, and the reason the committee increased it was because of the need out there.

We know what kind of a housing crisis we're having in America, particularly when people have no other place to go. This allows the lowest of income people in the poorest areas in the country, in rural America, to have some assistance to upgrade their houses so that the cost of high utility bills can be brought down with weatherization upgrades and things like that. I mean,

this is not a smart cut. This will be hurting the people who can least afford it and at a time when they most need it, and I would oppose this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I would be curious if, at your town hall meeting, you got up and asked people would you rather take $604 million out of the program that feeds women, infants, and children or would you like to take $604 million out of the Defense Department for a war that we're putting on a credit card, for an Afghan war that we're putting on a credit card, the Iraq war we're putting on a credit card, or the prescription drug program that wasn't paid for under the Republican program? How about asking the people's choices?

We just authorized a defense bill in committee where we talked about billions and billions of dollars, and those are all borrowed money. So why don't we get our priorities straight?

We spent 3 hours here last night discussing what the implications are of cutting the WIC program. I don't think this is a country that wants to balance its budget on the backs of the poorest people in the United States, on the people most vulnerable, on the people that need just basic services. And that's what this amendment does.

Mr. Broun, I know you're interested in cutting, squeezing, and trimming, but there are places to do that, and this is not one of them. Certainly, if you were here on the floor listening to the passions of last night, of 3 hours of debate on what the implications were for cutting the WIC program--and it seems that none of that was listened to by you because this is an amendment that goes right back to reducing that account by $604 million.

Take the money out of the people most vulnerable in the United States to write down the deficit and ignore the Defense Department, ignore the spending for weapons programs, ignore the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ignore everything that is with DOD, and expose everything that's with people in poverty.

This is a wrong amendment, and I hope it's soundly defeated.

I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, again, how many times do they have to keep attacking the WIC account, women, infant and children?

America has long decided that we ought to be taking care of the most vulnerable people in America. There are women who are pregnant, low- income, and what we've found is if you don't invest in teaching them how to have proper nutrition during their pregnancy, you have a risk of having a low-weight baby. A low-weight baby, as Dr. McDermott told us yesterday on the floor, can cost up to a quarter of a million dollars in incubation and hospital costs, and this is preventable with good nutrition.

We go on to teach women, once that baby is born, how to breast-feed that child. We know that is good health practices. And then we keep the children with nutrition in the first 5 years. That's why it's called women, infant and children; it's about pregnancy, birth and raising that child. And this amendment wants to take $82 million out of that program which instructs women how to do proper breast-feeding and works with the States to do educational programs.

We spent 3 hours last night debating the consequences of these cuts. And it's one of those penny-wise, super-pound foolish. It's also one of those where you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. There is a lot of value in keeping women well nourished during pregnancy and certainly keeping that newborn child well fed and nourished.

To strike money from this program is ill founded, and I strongly oppose the amendment.

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

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

This amendment reduces $100 million for Food for Peace. I don't know if the gentleman from Arizona was here last night, but there was a lot of discussion about the American image abroad. Certainly, at a time when the world economy is hurting, this Food for Peace program is exactly that.

We buy American goodwill. We buy this food from American farmers. They produce it. We buy it. We ship it in American ships, and we distribute it in a food program that buys a lot of goodwill for America at a time when the conflicts of this globe are generated in cultures of poverty, where people don't have access to proper nutrition, diet.

I know from being a Peace Corps volunteer that the first thing people try to do is figure out where they're going to get enough food to eat. You can't go to school with kids because you're

hustling to get firewood or you're hustling to get water or you're hustling to find anything that will produce food for the day. A woman can't do any of the other things, maybe raising livestock, if she is just trying to hustle for food all-day long.

I mean, it just seems to me that the most basic investment in preventing violence and war is the investment in nutrition and in trying to get fed particularly those people in the poorest sectors of the world. We've got Sub-Saharan Africa, and if people don't get fed there, you're going to have migrations of millions and millions of people, and there is going to be no place to put them. Nobody is going to want a big immigration of starving people from other parts of Africa. It's going to have an impact on us. Our intelligence agencies tell us it's a security threat.

An investment in food for people at the basic level is absolutely essential. This is food raised by American farmers, paid for by American dollars and sent where it is most needed in the world. It is a very good program, and it does, indeed, trade food for peace and stability, so I think it would be unwise to cut it by $100 million.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I just want to point out that you used the term ``nanny state.'' Since we're government, I don't think anybody wants to be responsible for everybody, to be responsible to raise the whole society; but I do think that this help that you give people from the Federal Government and from local and State governments is absolutely essential.

When you don't have that infrastructure of social services and needs there, I'll tell you what happens--people still have those problems. Only they don't have a place to go get them. So do you know what they do? They knock on your door. In America, we don't have to open our door day after day, with somebody holding a baby, as I saw in the Peace Corps. There were people all the time with dead babies, infants. There were people who were begging for money to bury them properly or there were people asking you for extra food after you finished your meal. They know what time you eat, and ask, Can you give your leftovers to us?

We don't have that in America because we have an infrastructure that takes care of people. I think, if you totally wipe that out and say, well, leave it to charity, charity is just voluntary. It doesn't always work. When the markets crash, the charity isn't there. Poverty is still there. The need is still there. You saw it as a doctor, and you know you've serviced people who couldn't pay their bills; but you do have Medicare reimbursements and other kinds of Medicare reimbursements so that you can, even if they can't pay their bills, get some form of payment. If it were all left up to voluntary, the doctors would have to serve people who just have no money. I don't think all the poor people in America would be taken care of.

So we do have to concern ourselves with how much care and spending we do, but at the same time, don't wipe out the programs that are essentially the life support systems of a society that is as rich as America. We can afford to take care of the people most vulnerable, whether they are aging or infants, and I think a lot of the discussion here has been about trying to delete the programs that help people at their most vulnerable stages of life.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Again, I don't know how many times we have to reiterate that these cuts, squeezes, and trims hurt the most vulnerable people in America and abroad. My good friend talked about a fiscal disaster that we are having in America and then just goes amendment after amendment attacking the people that are most vulnerable. This one just wipes out the entire program.

I wish the Member had been here to watch what happened in the early part of this decade when a partnership with the rich was created in this Congress to help in every tax way possible, in every expenditure way possible, in building up the war machine to respond to Iraq and Afghanistan. The rich got richer. The corporations that built all the equipment for our men and women in uniform got a lot of profits. We did that by putting it all on the credit card of the American taxpayer. We just charged it up. Yes, we ran up an incredible deficit.

The gentleman fails to look at the other side of the coin. He talked about the fact he had been in the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps was also put on that tax credit card. The uniform, the free medical service he got, the food that he ate while he was a Marine, all those things, thank God, we paid for. But then to say, okay, we're going to now reduce this fiscal disaster by just attacking the most vulnerable people in the world and wiping out the Food for Peace program.

Where are we? Where is the image of America? Where is that heart and soul? Where is that feeling of people that love our country because of the handouts we do give at a time of need? We're there to respond to disasters. And we can't just be that responder that says, okay, we're going to respond with our war machine. We've got to respond with our heart and our soul and the character of American human beings, which is very giving and very compassionate. To wipe out the Food for Peace program is not a wise thing to do.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

How much time do I have left?

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, in finishing, I would just like to say, there is some inconsistency and insincerity here in stating what you did as a profession and then cutting these programs, because these go to the children that we think the medical profession so much appreciates trying to care for. I mean, if you can't feed children, if you can't feed women, and you can't feed infants, no matter where in the world they are, problems are going to occur. Big, serious problems. That is not fiscal conservative. That is just not very intelligent.

I move to strike the last word.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I just want to make one short comment. What happens in this program is that we contract with countries to create these incentives to get kids to go to school. And you have heard the incredible stories that the gentleman from Massachusetts, Congressman Jim McGovern, just gave us on his experiences in visiting these countries.

It's not only that these contracts are made with countries so they have to put something into it, but they also have a way of working themselves out. So it's not one of those, going back to Congressman Broun's comment earlier about Nannygate--this is a ``work yourself out of a program.'' You can get off the program by having it work. And then you can move the moneys to another country. So I think it's an outstanding program and worth keeping and certainly this cut would ruin it all.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

First of all, I hope that we don't have more of these ambush amendments that we haven't had a chance to really look at. And this one really has serious implications. What it seems that this amendment does is, first of all, reduce the tobacco industry's fees that they have to pay the Federal Government. This is a big help to the tobacco industry. It cuts fees that the private sector has to pay the Federal Government. And what do those fees go into? Into campaigns to reduce tobacco consumption and to treat the issues related to tobacco. That's the way the amendment reads to us.

And I'd just like to remind the author that I represent California. California has, time after time, put taxes on the ballot to increase tobacco taxes, and they've passed overwhelmingly. And we use those fees that would come from the industry from the sale of--not even the industry, they come from the user to run very effective anti-tobacco campaigns.

We reduced smoking in California almost to zero. I mean, it's incredible. Most cities in California don't allow any smoking in public places. The communities I represent on the coastline don't allow you to even smoke on the beaches. You certainly can't smoke in public buildings and in any other kind of public space, even in public places that are privately owned.

So to do this, to ambush the anti-tobacco campaign with this amendment is just--it's a giveaway to the tobacco companies and reduces the fees they have to pay and hurts the ability to eliminate the illness caused by tobacco; and anybody who's had cancer in their family, as I've had, is very, very aware of the illnesses caused by tobacco users.

I think this is a very dangerous amendment and, hopefully, the gentleman will withdraw it. If not, we ought to oppose it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I was going to introduce an amendment, but I just want to make a statement and I'll withhold the amendment.

The statement I want to make is about what this underlying bill does to FDA. It cuts FDA, Federal Drug Administration, by 21 percent, about $580 million. On top of that, the FDA has to absorb another $37 million in higher rent costs. So we're really talking about a reduction to FDA of about $600 million. And yet we keep the law in place so they have to continue all the current requirements and activities that are mandated to them.

This kind of cut means that 2,000 fewer domestic and foreign inspections of firms that manufacture food and medical products can be made. This kind of cut means that more than 9,000 fewer FDA import inspections to verify that imported food and medical products meet safety standards. This kind of cut means there will be 4,000 fewer food and medical product samplings to identify safety problems.

The amendment that I was going to introduce would have moved some funds from the Commissioner's Office to the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, or known as CDRH. The Center for Devices and Radiological Health is responsible for bringing new technologies to market, and to make the medical devices that are already on the market safer and more effective.

The FDA has implemented a more streamlined process by which medical

devices can get to market called the Innovation Pathway. But with the cuts to the FDA budget in this bill, the Innovation Pathway will become Innovation Roadblock.

At a hearing at the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health on February 17, 2011, the Director of CDRH, Dr. Jeffery Shuren, testified that these cuts: ``The Innovation Pathway would be a non-option. And for the rest of what we do, this would result in increased delays in decisions. It would deny patients truly safe and effective innovative technologies. And it will result in jobs being lost.''

So moving funds, even nominal funds, to CDRH makes a point that we would have to maintain a commitment to getting critical medical devices to market and to patients.

The other point I wanted to make is the Center for Devices and Radiological Health is also responsible in part for the FDA advances in medical countermeasures. This medical countermeasures program extends across several FDA offices. The program coordinates the appropriate responses to national medical catastrophes. For CDRH, that means putting in place the right medical responses to radiological threats, threats like a dirty bomb, a rogue nuclear device, or even a natural disaster like the one that occurred in Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami.

This isn't just a health concern. It's a homeland security concern. Unless we are ready to handle these emergencies, many, many people could die or be permanently disabled. We have to prepare. The CDRH can do that for us, but not with a budget cut like the one the FDA is facing. The 21 percent cut in the FDA budget means the public health of Americans is put at risk, is put on hold. Medical safety devices are put on hold. Medical countermeasures are put on hold. Radiological treatment improvements, like new forms of x rays, PET scans and MRIs are put on hold.

I say it again, the 21 percent cut in the FDA budget is not good for America's health. I wish that we didn't have to adopt a budget with that kind of a cut.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

I'm just curious. I have a point of inquiry for Mr. Broun.

Mr. Broun, do you lease a car?

You just drive your own private car?

So you want to cut this account that is vehicles for the Department.

And how do you expect them to get around?

Well, I don't think we can operate government on a maybe, and I oppose this amendment.

We accept the amendment.

It's my pleasure to join you in this amendment. I actually have the best salmon caught in the lower 48 in Monterey Bay. A history of fishing in Monterey, used to be the sardine capital of the world. We're very sensitive to the fact that people are trying to mess around with the natural process and the Food and Drug Administration is set to approve genetically engineered salmon through a process the FDA uses to approve new drugs for animals. There's something wrong with the fact that in the approval process our food is now treated the same as animal drugs.

If approved, genetically engineered salmon would be the first genetically modified animal allowed onto the American dinner plate. Approval of genetically engineered salmon poses serious threats to human health, our fishing communities, and our wildlife stock fish.

They have no long-term studies on the safety of genetically engineered fish. There could be grave, unintended consequences on human health. Preliminary studies show that the compounds in genetically engineered salmon may be linked to cancer and severe drug allergies.

We've seen that the dominant method of raising salmon in other parts of the world is an open net, these pens in the ocean, and farmed fish escape these facilities every year. The impact of genetically engineered salmon escaping could be detrimental to wild stocks. The list goes on and on and on.

Our fishing communities are already facing challenges, and genetically engineered salmon would have an additional effect of lowering wild salmon prices, as already seen with normal farmed salmon. Lower prices, combined with declines in wild salmon stocks, would be economically detrimental to our fishermen, our fishing culture, and our coastal communities. It is unnecessary to genetically engineer salmon.

For these reasons, I support Mr. Young's amendment that prohibits funds to the FDA to approve genetically engineered salmon.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I strongly support this amendment because the language in the bill--I'm going to read it to you. It's one paragraph, but it's the most draconian language because we've never done this before ever in an ag bill. It says: ``The committee directs the Department to provide an electronic notification to the committee at least 72 hours prior to any travel in support of the Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food initiative, and such notification shall include the agenda of the entire trip along with the cost to U.S. taxpayers. Additionally, the committee directs the Department to post media advisories for all such trips on its Web site, and that such advisories include the same information.''

My God, we don't do this to know your soldier, to know your veteran, to know your school teacher, to know anybody else that's in the public service, to know your law enforcement officer; and yet they're doing this for Know Your Farmer?

This program, as Mr. Kingston pointed out, we just had the ag report come out and I'm very proud that one county in my district does $4 billion worth of agriculture, as pointed out in that report, that grows 59 percent of all the lettuce consumed in the United States in one county in California that I represent. Part of that is this program now that they're doing, which is Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food.

Consumers can go with their cell phones into a grocery store; and because of the barcode there, they can ZIP it and it immediately comes up the farmer who grew that food saying this is who I am and this is where I grew it and this is how many days it takes to get to you, and all the things you might want to--if we're going to educate people about nutrition, I can't think of a more exciting way to do it.

And to require that the Department has to essentially do this gestapo, looking at every time you move you have to report to a higher authority on your initiative and on your entire trip and the agenda and cost, we don't do that for anybody else in the Federal Government, and I don't think we should do it for our farmers or for our members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture who are supporting our farmers.

So I support this amendment very strongly.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition because I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you are so afraid of Know Your Farmer-- Know Your Food. They say, well, we need to have this program authorized. My God, we went to war without authorizing it. We spent all that money, and half the people don't even question it. And you want to question Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food?

I think this is a direct attack on the White House initiative, which is about

nutrition, which is about trying to get people--I mean, we talked about this yesterday, about how you have places in this country that are food deserts. You have places where there are no grocery stores. There are 7-Elevens. They don't have fresh fruits and vegetables. People can't go down to a local store and find fresh fruits and vegetables.

So what do we do? This committee puts money into the USDA to help farmers markets get established in these tough areas, to encourage farmers to come in, and at the same time teach people who have never shopped for fresh fruits and vegetables, never been to a farmers market.

We have actually tied in, in my district, the issuing of food stamps and WIC vouchers so that they will spend them right there, and 65 percent of the income that comes to the farmers at the farmers markets comes from them.

So this is all part of the initiatives to get people to know about agriculture. Milk doesn't come from a carton. Food doesn't come from a grocery store. It gets grown somewhere by a farmer, he and his wife. And we are trying to get kids to know something about agriculture. We are putting in school gardens. All of this is part of Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food, and you want to strike it.

What is this? Is this some kind of conspiracy that you are afraid of? People might learn a little bit about where food comes from in America, and there is organic food and that you have choices and you just don't have to eat everything that is packaged and processed and full of salts and sugars and additives and preservatives?

What are we afraid of? What are we afraid of? My God, to strike it, or tell the department that they can't do this, I think it is not in our best intentions, and it is not smart nutrition.

We are trying to get people, I know, because I am trying to lose weight and it is a very hard thing to change your character, to change your eating habits. Unless we do that, we are going to grow a lot of Americans who aren't going to be very healthy because they don't know their farmer and they don't know their food. And if you strike this ability for the department to go out and do that kind of outreach, we are going to have a less healthy America.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word.

I just want to point out that this amendment doesn't save one penny.

This amendment doesn't save one penny. Ironically, we just returned from the White House summer congressional picnic, and people ate food there. At every table, it listed where the food came from. Indeed, I remember because I went to the ice cream place and there was a stack of honey that came from the White House, that has a White House label on it, and it's a gift that the First Lady gives to visiting dignitaries from around the world as a sample of American honey grown at the White House. We just experienced Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food not more than an hour ago.

This amendment does nothing but be mean.

I move to strike the last word.

I yield to the chairman, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell).

I yield back the balance of my time.

Go ahead. I'll just strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

I have concerns about where the money comes from as all these bills are offsetting, but I think that the purpose here should be funded. We have this whole initiative--and some of it has been attacked tonight-- about trying to get healthy foods grown by American farmers to people in areas that are called food deserts, as the gentlelady from Texas pointed out. There are places that people just can't go. There isn't a grocery store. There aren't fresh fruits and vegetables.

I mean, think of the 7-Eleven. That's the kind of convenience stores that are around. Even the one we use up here a couple of blocks away is very limited in the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables it has.

So what this initiative is all about, and it's the President's initiative too, is trying to get food--it's an educational process. I think the hardest cultural--this is what I learned from living in other cultures in the Peace Corps. The hardest thing to do is to get people to change their eating habits. We all know that struggle when we go on a diet. So it takes a lot of education. It takes a lot of support, but it also takes the need to have access to it.

You need to have access to the fresh fruits and vegetables, and they can either come to you in a farmers market or you can go to them. But if you have neither a farmers market and there's nothing to go to, you have no option. And that's what this amendment is about, getting some money into the program that will be able to outreach and getting good, nutritious food to families who most need it who, without that, have a good chance of not growing up healthy, high incidence of obesity, high incidence of diabetes, high-risk issues that cost a lot of money for the taxpayers when they have to go on dialysis or have to be under treatment.

So we have spent many years here in the committee--and the chairman knows it very well--of looking at how do we prevent this from happening when the choices are there. These are preventable diseases and preventable ill health situations, but we've got to reach out and do it, and that's what this amendment does and I think it deserves support.

I have a recollection of that.

Yes.

Yes, it was. But remember Ms. Kaptur's amendment in our committee of trying to subsidize farmers markets to go into high-risk areas to get it started so that it does develop a market approach and can be sustainable, but we reach out and do those kinds of things.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

I move to strike the last word.

I wasn't going to rise on this amendment--and I probably shouldn't--but this discussion just bugs me.

I represent more productive agriculture in my district than anyone in this room--$4 billion in just one county--and I represent a bunch of counties. What we grow are specialty crops. We grow 85 crops in Monterey County. As we were talking about earlier, 58 percent of all the lettuce in the United States is grown in that county. We grow 35 different varieties of wine grapes, and we are the leading counties in strawberry production and in a bunch of berry productions. In fact, our motto there is that we're the ``salad bowl capital of the world,'' which includes all of the ingredients in salad--celery, lettuce. All those things, we grow.

Do you know what? They don't get a dime of support from the Federal Government. If the market falls, they eat it. If a disaster comes in, they eat it.

So the reason these amendments are brought up by Mr. Kind and Mr. Blumenauer year after year is that, frankly--do you know what?--the farm bill doesn't address this issue. It really doesn't. It's too tough--it's too politically tough--and there are too many vested interests in this town. You have a whole bunch of agriculture out there, and some people would suggest that more than all of the money created in commodity supports is in what they call ``specialty crops,'' and that's the stuff you eat all the time.

You can't have this bifurcated world out there where you have a bunch of people who are essentially on welfare and a bunch of people who are just assuming all the risk. What really surprises me is that, with the conservative side of the aisle over here that really is driven toward market approaches to solve problems, this is not a market approach. This is a subsidy. It's a taxpayer subsidy, and it's going to very wealthy people in some cases.

So I am rising to say this amendment, as in the past, gets defeated; but

these gentlemen have an issue, and I just beg with the leaders. I've got great respect for the ranking member of the Ag Committee here on our side of the aisle. I know he can wrestle with these problems. He's a CPA. He knows these things.

I think the handwriting is on the wall. If the conservatives on your side of the aisle would take this on as an issue that Americans are really going to address, we may get some progress on the farm bill. If you don't, you're abandoning your marketing concepts, and you're abandoning what is needed in modern America.

Just remember, that apple, that pear, that banana in there, that celery, the strawberries--the list goes on and on with all the fruits and vegetables--they don't get any of these payments. So let's not have a bifurcated agricultural production out there where half of it depends on taxpayer payments and the other half has to just live by market forces. Let's have everybody a lot more influenced by market forces.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, Pigford v. Glickman was a class action discrimination suit between the USDA and black farmers. The suit was filed by an estimated 2,000 black farmers who said that USDA discriminated against them in loan programs. A settlement agreement was approved in 1999.

The suit claimed that USDA discriminated against black farmers on the basis of race and failed to investigate or properly respond to complaints from 1983 to 1997.

The deadline for submitting a claim was September 12, 2000. However, a large number of applicants filed late and reported deficiencies in representation by class counsel.

Consequently, the 2008 farm bill (PL 110-246) permitted any claimant who had submitted a late-filing request under Pigford and who hadn't previously obtained a determination on the merits of their claim should obtain a determination. A maximum of $100 million in mandatory spending was made available for payments of these claims in the 2008 farm bill.

The multiple claims that were subsequently filed by over 25,000 black farmers were consolidated into a single case, In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation (commonly referred to as Pigford II).

On February 18, 2010, Attorney General Holder and Secretary Vilsack announced a $1.25 billion settlement of these Pigford II claims.

The Pigford II settlement provides both a fast-track settlement process and high payments to potential claimants who go through a more rigorous review and documentation process.

Potential claimants can seek the fast-track payments of up to $50,000 plus debt relief, or choose the longer process damages of up to $250,000.

Finally, our Nation's black farmers who were discriminatecl against by their own government have received some modicum of justice.

Despite years of political gamesmanship that prevented us from finding a fair resolution, thousands of families who have waited for the settlements will now receive them.

We cannot deny them this basic justice.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Will the gentleman yield?

Could you tell me where in the bill this has anything to do with what you're talking about?

That's not in the amendment that we have.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I know it's late, but I rise in opposition to this, because, first of all, using telemedicine by FDA I don't think is, one, illegal, or ill-wise. Secondly, I think what the gentleman is going to talk about is a legal drug in the United States. It's been a legitimate drug in the United States after it met all of the rigorous FDA process in 1996 and has been available since 2000 in this country.

I remember vigorous debates in this committee about the conditionality by which FDA would license this drug. It is legal and available in all 50 States in the United States, in Washington, DC, in Guam, and in Puerto Rico. It's a prescription drug which is not available to the public through pharmacies. Instead, its distribution is restricted to specifically qualified licensed physicians. To use it, a woman must go to a doctor's office.

Whatever controversy surrounded the introduction of RU-486 in the United States was settled years ago, and there's no reason for this amendment other than to stir up the controversy over the reproductive rights of women. I think by the gentleman's comments, you can see that that's what he's trying to do.

I would urge us all to oppose this amendment. And frankly it doesn't have anything to do with USDA funds, because we don't do telemedicine abortions.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I move to strike the last word.

What Ranking Member Peterson is talking about is that this is an ag bill that is to help agriculture, producers of agriculture. What this amendment does is hurt them. It supports the banks by delaying transparency. So it's going to cost the end user more money. The end user is all the customers that this bill is all about.

If the gentleman really wants to help the banks, maybe his amendment ought to be in the Financial Services bill. But this is going to hurt our people that we, in this committee, work for all the time. And I don't think that's a very good amendment.

I ask for a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.