Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a great American, George Tanimura, on the occasion of his reaching his 100th year. George has lived a remarkable life that has spanned the Great Depression, WWII, and the rise of the modern information economy. In that time George confronted prejudice, helped to rebuild a dislocated community, nurtured a large extended family, and fostered the development of the modern produce industry. George is a farmer's farmer. As one of the founders of the Tanimura & Antle, he has helped build one of the nation's largest private lettuce producers. So while you may have never heard of George Tanimura, I can guarantee that every Member of this House has eaten something that George and his family have grown. He has planted and nurtured a legacy that will produce a crop for generations to come.

George was born in San Juan Bautista on July 2, 1915. His parents had emigrated from Japan to build a better life in the United States. While attending grammar school in Castroville, George thinned iceberg lettuce on his father's small farm. After his mother died, George, the eldest of 12 siblings, had to leave high school to farm with his father. Then when George was just 16, his father died leaving George with the responsibility for the family and their farm. In the midst of the depression, George became the patriarch of his large family. Under his leadership, the Tanimura children began their own prosperous farming operations.

However, just as they were recovering, the U.S. entry into WWII turned the Tanimuras' lives upside down. In 1942, they found themselves imprisoned by our government along with other Americans of Japanese descent in remote internment camps across the desert West. And even though the Tanimuras lost everything, two of his brothers fought with the U.S. Army in Europe. For George, his time in the camp offered him another opportunity to find fortune in the midst of adversity. He met Masaye Yamauchi and they were married on September 21, 1944. Upon release, the Tanimura family farmed small patches of land, saved the profits, and ultimately purchased their first acre of land. This simple formula began the Tanimuras trek toward the American Dream.

In the late 1950s, the Tanimuras began to grow exclusively for Bud Antle. Bud, and his son Bob, had been working closely with the Tanimura family for many years. Finally in 1982, George and Bob combined over 30 years of mutual friendship, respect, and experience to create Tanimura & Antle. The new company combined the Antle's shipping and marketing savvy with the Tanimura's growing expertise. That combination has helped T&A grow into one of the world's premier fresh produce companies. And it forms the basis of T&A's continued success.

Family and community are very important to George. George and Masaye have two children, Glenn (Sheila) Tanimura and Leslie (Ken) Morishita. They also have 4 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. George has served countless community efforts giving his leadership, dedication, and wealth to making his region a better place for all families. But his deep sense of humility keeps him from claiming any recognition other than his simple refrain of ``it doesn't matter, I'm just a farmer.''

That, Mr. Speaker, is the essence of George Tanimura--a humble farmer whose hard work and integrity have helped create one of the pillars of the American agricultural economy. George and the men and women like him are the bed rock of our nation. I know I speak for the whole House in extending the gratitude of the United States to George and his family for 100 years of excellence.

Thank you for yielding.

Madam Chair, this bill has in its title ``America That Works.'' It is not going to work with this provision in it, and that is why the bill fails. I think year after year of failing and failing is a policy of upward failure.

It makes no sense not to allow all the Federal agencies to coordinate. We do that in the military. This would be like restricting the ability of the military to coordinate between services.

So we do it with shipping lanes, we do it with wildlife, we do it with habitat protection. It is just smart.

The spatial planning in the National Ocean Policy, for the first time, saves a lot of money because all these Federal agencies now sit down and talk

about how they can carry out the policies that they are responsible for. You wipe all that. No dialogue, no communication, no ability to reach agreements in a way by this crazy restrictive language.

Without this amendment, this bill proves that America can't work.

I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Robert V. Antle on the occasion of his recognition by the Grower-Shipper Association with the E.E. ``Gene'' Harden Award for Lifetime Achievement. Bob is a remarkable American whose vision, innovation, and hard work has helped to shape the Salinas Valley and build one of the largest and most innovative family-owned produce companies in the world.

Bob was born in Salinas, California, in 1935. In 1949, while still in high school, Bob joined his father, Bud Antle, in the family's lettuce harvest operation. During that time he started to learn the produce business from the ground up. After graduating from Watsonville High School, Bob attended Stanford University. While at Stanford, Bob married Sue Merrill Crawford. Bob and Sue have been blessed with four children, Rick, Karen, Kathy, and Mike and further blessed with 17 wonderful grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild.

After graduating from Stanford in 1957, Bob joined his family's business and took charge of its carrot operation known as ``Antle Carrots.'' He excelled in all aspects of the business and even built a field pack carrot machine. Bob then moved into Sales and Marketing eventually becoming the General Sales Manager. In 1966, Bob relocated to the East Coast to develop the House of Bud, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler. Under Bob's leadership, the House of Bud opened facilities in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Belgium.

In 1972, Bud Antle unexpectedly passed away at age 58. Bob, following his father's leadership and example, then became the CEO of all Antle activities. After six years of further developing and growing these businesses, Bob merged the Bud Antle companies with Castle & Cooke, now Dole Food Company, and joined their senior management team. Over the course of his produce career, Bob is credited with implementing several major produce industry initiatives, such as wrapping fresh vegetables in the field, developing distribution centers for the introduction of wrapped lettuce and other source packaged fruits and vegetables, and producing crops from transplants.

During the late 1940s, Bob met the Tanimura family who operated one of the produce farming operations that his father Bud worked with. Bob and the Tanimuras maintained and strengthened that relationship over the years. Finally in 1982, Bob and the Tanimura brothers combined over 50 years of mutual friendship, respect, and experience to create Tanimura & Antle. The new company combined the Antles' packing, shipping, and marketing expertise with the Tanimuras' growing expertise. That combination has helped T&A grow into one of the world's premier fresh produce companies. And it forms the basis of T&A's continued success.

While Bob is a towering figure in the fresh produce community, his leadership extends well beyond the industry. Bob is Co-Chairman of the Leon and Sylvia Panetta Institute, past president of the President's Council at California State University Monterey Bay, and Founding President of Central Coast Water Quality Preservation, Inc. Bob also actively supports the University of Arizona. In March 2005, he was appointed to the California State Senate Commission: Agricultural Worker Housing and Health.

Mr. Speaker, I know I speak for the whole House in commending Bob Antle for helping Americans eat better food and the people of the Central Coast live better lives.

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

I rise having cosponsored this bill as the ranking member on the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. I have to say that I think we have worked very well together. We have worked together as chair and ranking member over a period of time. It is an interesting perspective. I think we have crossed the cultural divide when a Californian can understand the language of an Alabaman, and we have become friends.

I have to say that probably 90 percent of this bill is something we all agree on. Ten percent is what we don't agree on, and it is a horrible 10 percent--a big 10 percent. The bill allocates $20.8 billion, which is the same as what we came up with last year in the conference level.

I appreciate the working relationship that Mr. Aderholt already outlined and the wonderful staff that both his office and I have, and my office and the committee has. We all work well together as a team. So we bring this bill to the floor today.

It is quite a privilege to be able to have this position, and I think that we all understand the privilege, because the USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is our main focus, in addition to the Food and Drug Administration, and to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of Agriculture, many people don't understand, was created during the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln. It was a department that needed to be created as the United States was facing the Western expansion. Abraham Lincoln was very insightful in realizing that people who moved out into the boonies needed help. There is no infrastructure there. There is nothing there. It became kind of a home ec department. And to this day, the Department of Agriculture still has a division of rural water, a division of rural housing, farmworker housing, and of rural telecommunications.

It is obviously involved with all the science research in agriculture and a big research section. The USDA has a specialist in almost every county in the United States and almost every country in the world, as we have ag advisers in all of our Embassies.

It is an awesome responsibility to govern a very complex system of trade and balances, of phytosanitary inspections, of fighting diseases that get into this country. And it is a lot of fun, also, and I think that is why we get along well trying to put together a good bill.

Now, I voted against this bill in committee because of the concerns of several aspects. Among these concerns are two highly objectionable nutrition riders. I am really concerned that the bill would allow school food authorities to get waivers from complying with the improved lunch and breakfast nutrition standards in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which we enacted in 2010. The bill would allow them to get waivers if they show they are operating at a net loss.

I believe that rather than going backwards and serving children in some schools less healthy meals, we should be encouraging the USDA to continue giving schools the technical assistance they need to meet the standards. We should also be encouraging USDA to continue providing flexibility, where warranted, in meeting nutritional standards. The approach in this bill, however, is unacceptable.

Second, despite the recommendations of the medical community indicating that consumption of starchy vegetables meets or exceeds recommended amounts, and the food in-take data showing that white potatoes are the most widely used vegetables and therefore by law or by statute have been excluded from the WIC program, where you get vouchers to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, this bill allows white potatoes to be purchased under that program. It is not necessary at all. The white potato lobby is a very effective lobby.

I am troubled by the inclusion of this bill requiring white potatoes be eligible for purchase in the WIC program. The WIC program, as I said, gives supplemental nutrition through specified foods, and white potatoes is not one of them. So there are some real concerns with this bill. This is the first time that Congress has dictated as to what has to be purchased with those vouchers, and we have never before mandated an inclusion of a specific food item in the WIC food package in the history of the program.

While the funding levels in this bill are, in general, acceptable, there are some exceptions. The most notable to that is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This is a Commission that reviews about $300 trillion in trade. That is almost $1 trillion a day. And what we do is provide funding to have the referees so that they know when the trading is being fair or not fair, and it is essentially a review process, but they need money to hire those referees, as we call them. The President asked for $62 million more than we are allowing him to have to fill the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Those are big concerns.

On the positive side, the bill restores the Food for Peace funding to 2014 levels. It increases the McGovern-Dole program by $13 million over the 2014 levels. But I am also concerned that in these programs there is an exclusion of important reforms that would have furthered the impact of each dollar spent on food aid.

Given the high level of need, our food aid has to be as cost effective and as efficient as possible, so I am disappointed that food aid reforms enabling more people to be fed at lower cost were not included in the bill.

I would like to say that you are going to hear a lot of my colleagues raise issues on some of these issues because it is very important that we try to get it right and hopefully defeat some of the bad provisions that are in this bill.

Food is peace. America leads the world in food assistance. California is the number one agriculture State in the Union. I am proud to be the ranking member in bringing this bill to the floor for healthy debate.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard), the second generation of congresspersons from the Roybal family.

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey, Dr. Holt.

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlelady from New Mexico (Ms. Michelle Lujan Grisham).

Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time each side has remaining?

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of California (Mr. George Miller), the author of the Child Nutrition Act. He probably knows more about child nutrition than anybody in Congress.

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

First of all, I would like to announce that the Tom Colicchio group-- he is one of those celebrity chefs and his group is called the Food Policy Action Network--they have told us that they are going to score the vote on this bill because of this provision that we are talking about right now and the amendment that I am going to offer to strike the provision.

The reason I want to strike the provision in the bill is because it just gives it a blank waiver. It says, schools, you don't have to comply. That is too broad. We could have worked out some compromise language and more flexible language. But just to give them blank waiver, I think, is just an opt-out and doesn't necessarily get them back in, doesn't have any guidelines for how you can improve and get back on track. That's why I think it is a pretty extreme provision in the bill and ought to be knocked out.

Another reason is that we are paying for it. The taxpayers of this country put up the money and we are allocating it to this program, and I don't think the taxpayers want their money to go to food that isn't nutritious, that doesn't help kids to be healthier. I am not insinuating that the other side wants that, but I am saying that with that money, as in everything we do in the whole rest of this bill, it comes with conditionality.

Congress is a heavy parent. We don't just give money out. We also give instructions on what to spend it for and not to spend it for. When we are giving money to schools for school nutrition--for school lunch, school breakfast, school snack programs--we put some conditionality in it, and the conditionality is, let's buy healthy food with it, fruits and vegetables, and serve them to the kids.

I know there are places that say that is not what the kids eat at home or what they like, and so they are throwing it away. That is called ``plate waste.'' But frankly, there is plate waste in our cafeteria here in Congress. There is plate waste everywhere. There is too much plate waste in America. When so much of the world can't get access to food we are throwing away about 50 percent of what we prepare every day, which is just appalling.

How do you change that? One is you get kids to like what they are eating. We have to encourage our kids to eat vegetables. As was said earlier, you have to encourage your kids to take a bath, you have to encourage your kids to turn off the television set, you have to encourage your kids to do the math homework that they don't want to do. We give instruction.

I think what is missing in this whole debate is the instructional opportunity. Frankly, America has got to face the fact that we have not really put much attention into raising a culture of people that have values in food health, in body health, and the fast food industry has been very good at getting a lot of sugar, a lot of salt, a lot of things out there that taste really great, and people want to eat that all the time, but your body is not made to handle all that.

I think it is an opportunity for us to use the school nutrition program as a learning method. I point out that when I grew up there weren't any fast foods. McDonald's was the first fast food industry to come to our area. It came to the biggest city in my county in 1964. I had already graduated from college. So

all my youth experience was eating at home, eating in the school, and there were never any fast foods. It was all fresh prepared every day. I didn't have the ability to get all that. If anything, it was in a can, and a whole new industry was developing to have fresh frozen.

So we have an opportunity to help our national security problem with food nutrition because the military officers tell us that 75 percent of the youth today cannot qualify to get in the military--75 percent. That is just appalling. That is why they have indicated that we need to have a school nutrition program.

We also see it in health care costs, the biggest cost in America. Why we did this whole health care reform was to bring down cost. Underlying all of that was, hey, we are going to raise healthier people in this country so we can avoid--the ounce of prevention--avoid those expensive costs when people get diabetes, obesity, and other things that are preventable. So what better way to teach the cost of prevention than through nutritional health and exercise.

Lastly, why it is important that we wipe out this provision in the bill is because we are paying. The money is all there. So the schools that would be able to get the flexibility that you talk about, the waiver, they get to keep all the money but they don't have any of the responsibility to deliver the product, to deliver the nutritional foods. I think that is where we are wrong. We can't just give them money and then no responsibility to be wisely spent on the purposes for which it was intended.

So that amendment is going to come up later, and I hope that I can get support from this amendment across the aisle.

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining so I can see how much time I can yield?

All right. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee for a colloquy.

Thank you for asking. The other provision is not in this school nutrition program, but in the WIC--the Women, Infants, and Children--program where we give vouchers to mothers of newborns or pregnant women in expectation that they are having children. To give them access to healthy fruits and vegetables we give them vouchers.

In that recommended formula, what the voucher should be spent on is, they are not allowed to spend them on white potatoes. Why? Because Americans eat about 90 pounds of white potatoes or potatoes per year. Think of it. They have hash browns for breakfast, french fries for lunch, and baked potatoes for night. That is a lot of potatoes in one day. Certainly, a newborn and about-to-be-born are not necessarily needing potatoes.

Nonetheless, the potato industry is very powerful here and they were able to get a provision in demanding that the vouchers also include the ability to buy white potatoes. That is what stirred up this whole comment, because Congress has never dictated as to what you have to buy with it or to get into buying things that haven't been recommended as nutritional.

It is often said as a food analogy that if you like sausages or laws you should never watch either of them being made. Perhaps what you are watching is that white potato mandate is getting stuck into this bill.

Mr. Chairman, we worked hard to try to put together a pretty good bill, except for these two provisions that we were just talking about and the underfunding of the Federal Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and we will be having amendments on those issues.

I reserve the balance of my time.

We don't have any further speakers.

Mr. Chairman, let me explain that not a drop of this money, a cent of it, can be spent on a teacher's salary. This is not, ``We are going to spend it on food or a teacher's salary.'' This is only for food, and the Federal Government takes sole responsibility for that. If States want to add something they can. But it is a Federal program, one of the only solid Federal programs in K-12 education.

I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I respect the gentleman's desire to cut, squeeze, and trim and be a deficit hawk, but I think you are really cutting the wrong area.

There are a lot of statistical departments in the Department of Agriculture because it is involved with a lot of different issues, sort of the whole rural economics of America, all the trade issues.

You have got two departments. You have got one that does the big data and one that does the small data.

You are a doctor of medicine, and it would be like comparing an MRI to a thermometer. They both are diagnostic tools but they don't do the same things. And neither does ERS or NAS.

You stated they seem like they duplicate. No, they are both involved in economic research, and I don't know how to explain it all, but it is the underlying data that drives everything, drives all the markets, drives decisionmaking. The growers are private sector capitalists, if you will, having to borrow from a banking system. They all have to have good data in order to make decisions.

I think, if you squeeze and trim these economic data collectors, you are really hurting the underlying economy of agriculture in the United States, so I would oppose your amendment.

We need crop data. We need market data. We need nutritional data. We need rural economy data, and these are the agencies, particularly the ERS that you are cutting, that collects that, so I oppose the amendment.

I yield to the gentleman.

Well, I am not sure that I understand the gentleman's question, but there are different kinds of data, and there are different places that you collect that data, as there is in everything we do in government and the private sector.

I think what you are doing, I mean, you are taking a program--if you just kind of open the book and look at government and find all these areas where you think there is duplication, I think that the next step is to go and find out exactly where there is waste.

Everybody is against--and we do trim waste because we are always looking for money, but this is not the place. There is no trim there. It doesn't get you anything. In fact, it hurts the

users of that data, not being able to have it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, let's be very practical about this. I think you have to put it in the context of what has happened.

We passed the Dodd-Frank bill because of an incredible financial disaster in this country, and what we found out is that the regulators weren't regulating. We found out they couldn't regulate because they didn't even have regulations or any provisions about all of these derivatives swaps. They were inventing new things that weren't even in law.

The Federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission is right at the heart of all these new instruments and all these derivatives swaps and so on. In fact, we learned from Director Gensler--who came before our committee and pointed out the massive amount of trading that goes on, $300 trillion dollars.

We couldn't even figure out in the committee how to explain how many millions trillions were. It is so much, and it is scary. We have got to have people on the job to do this and the technology to do it.

Now, just to make sure that people are carrying out the law, you have got to have people review that process. In fact, because the industry doesn't want to be regulated, they go to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and say: cut this, don't give them the tools to implement it, don't allow them to be the referees they have to be by law.

We approved, last year, $315 million, and we criticized that. The President came back for $280 million this year, and we have cut that. Even when he went along with knowing that he wouldn't be able to get all the things he asked for, we cut it again, so this bill fences off part of that. It seems to me a reasonable amendment to adopt, and I urge the adoption of it.

I yield to the gentlewoman from California, Maxine Waters, the ranking member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of my colleague from Santa Barbara and of this resolution.

My heart goes out to the community of Isla Vista, the victims and their families.

As a father and grandfather, my heart breaks for the families of the young lives that ended too soon: Christopher Michaels-Martinez, Veronika Weiss, Katie Cooper, Cheng-Yuan Hong, George Chen, Weihan Wang.

And I am angry that we're in this situation yet again.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution states that the House of Representatives remains committed to working to help prevent tragedies like this from happening ever again.

Some may say that today is not the day to talk about guns, or violence.

Others may say that weapons are not the problem, and we should focus our efforts on mental health care.

I say we need to talk about both. The shooter was a mentally ill young man who had better access to firearms than he did sufficient mental health care.

We also need to talk about misogyny and its impact on domestic violence.

These are hard conversations, with no easy answers. But we owe it to the victims and their families of this and other tragedies to have these important conversations.

We must speak on behalf of those who can no longer speak. We must not be afraid to take action.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this amendment as a coauthor of it and to point out this is six Democrats and six Republicans that are authoring this. There are 33 States, three of which have just passed laws and the Governors have indicated they will sign them.

This is essentially saying, look, if you are following State law, you are a legal resident doing your business under State law, the Feds just can't come in and bust you and bust the doctors and bust the patient. It is more than half the States. So you don't have to have any opinion about the value of marijuana. This doesn't change any laws. This doesn't affect one law, just lists the States that have already legalized it only for medical purposes, only medical purposes, and says, Federal Government, in those States, in those places, you can't bust people. It seems to me a practical, reasonable amendment in this time and age.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this.

I was around when this National Ocean Policy was before Congress and was heard in the committee. In fact, the commission that created it was created by Congress, and the members were appointed by President George Bush, and those members included members of the oil and gas industry.

They came up with recommendations that we need to do the conflicts of sea resolution, and that is what the National Ocean Policy does. It gets all of the Federal agencies together, and because they are together and can talk about what they each do when they are in conflict, the priorities it supports are consistent with the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, which is supported by Governor Perry and the Gulf State Governors.

It supports activities at Texas A&M, as they have signed a letter opposing any legislation that would undermine the National Ocean Policy. It affects the Texas coastal programs based in Houston, and they have also signed a letter in opposition to this amendment.

A local example of National Ocean Policy work is with the Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy, NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and NASA. They have all worked on sensitive shorelines just north and south of Houston, which are key destinations for birders and beachgoers. They were able to resolve the critical conflicts between these agencies. Also, it would have an impact on the Port of Houston.

So there are reasons you want to avoid a conflict of interest. This is a great one with which to do it. We do it in law enforcement, we do it in firefighting, and we ought to do it with our conflicts in the oceans. Oppose this amendment.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chair, I rise in general debate to talk about NOAA. But I first also want to echo everything that has been said about our great colleague from Virginia, Frank Wolf. Frank is one of the few Members of Congress who has visited my district. He actually went onto my property in Big Sur and ended up coming back and saying: Now I understand why you are so passionate about the oceans.

It is an interesting committee that both Ranking Member Fattah and Chairman Wolf head because it is a committee that has all of the Department of Commerce; it has all of the Department of Justice; and it has the science programs, NASA, NSF, and the Office of Science and Technology. Essentially, the science of America is in your hands. And this bill has a lot of it in there.

Particularly, I would like to talk about NOAA. NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And what has been happening is that, as we have gotten interested in the weather and as we have gotten interested in sort of the sky, we are putting a lot more money into it and sucking funds away from the oceans. And yet what is happening in the oceans is that they are dying; and if the ocean dies, planet Earth dies. So while there is money in this to look at the moons and oceans of other planets, we are going to do it at the peril of our own ocean.

Our coastal economies support 81 percent of all U.S. employment in the United States, over 100 million jobs. Coastal economies contribute to 84 percent of the U.S. GDP. Ocean tourism is an $89.25 billion industry. It relies on healthy marine mammal populations, healthy coral reefs, and healthy clean waters and beaches. Just think of all of the people who recreate on beaches. If those were polluted, they wouldn't be able to do so.

The United States plays a big role in the world. We are, in fact, hosting the international oceans conference next month. And one of the topics is going to be the blue economy: What does it mean to all the countries of the world and to the United States?

So as we go through this bill, I just want to emphasize that the wet side needs as much attention as the sky side.

Again, I thank the gentleman from Virginia, Frank Wolf, for the great job that he has done.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I rise in support of the gentleman from New Jersey, Dr. Rush Holt, who is probably the smartest scientist we have ever had in the United States Congress. He gave us a warning that we need to pay attention to climate research. It is not weather research. Weather, we have just put a lot more money into. We are worried about prediction. We are worried about what is going to happen. They want to know in the next few days whether there is going to be a tornado or a hurricane.

But climate is what tells us what is going to happen in the long-term future, whether we are going to have a sustained drought, whether we are going to have fire danger because of winds and droughts, whether we will have rainfall patterns--that it falls in one part of the country and not in the other--that will affect agriculture and water resources.

I live on the coast. And although a lot of people deny that there is global warming and, therefore, ice melting and, therefore, the oceans rising, I can tell you that it is actually asked in all the zoning matters and building permits. Now in California, if you are going to build along the coastline, what is that coastline going to look like 10 years out? What does the climate forecast--climate, not weather forecast--tell us about these rising oceans that will not allow your house to be built exactly where you want it to be built? So this is really important information to have.

We have understood how important ports are to the United States' trade. We can't live without goods going out of this country and goods coming in, and they come through our ports. And if the oceans are going to rise and destroy our docks and our facilities, that is going to have a huge impact on our national economy.

Ocean chemistry, the next amendment is going to talk about ocean acidification. I am going to rise on that as well, which is very important to our fisheries.

So I think that an amendment like this is really important to invest in. We cannot really understand weather unless we understand the patterns of climate.

Climate change will impact trade. Climate change will impact food security. Climate change will impact national security. Climate change will impact human health.

It is imperative that we robustly fund NOAA climate research in order to be prepared for and adapt to the changing weather and changing climate.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I rise in support of this amendment and this concept. I want to thank the gentlewoman from the Northwest, Congresswoman Bonamici, for introducing this amendment.

Look, this is a science bill, and there is a lot of discussion tonight on science, and a lot of it is on weather and climate. What generates the climate of this planet is the ocean, and we sometimes often overlook the importance that the ocean plays. Now, if we are killing the ocean, which some people think we are doing, because if you think about it, we have dumped everything we don't want on the mainland into the ocean, including nuclear waste and all kinds of other waste, we have caught everything that is in the ocean that is edible, and we have never found the balance. There is one industry that has, and that is the shellfish industry, which doesn't have to go out and just collect wild shellfish anymore. It is the fish farming industry, and it is a $270 million industry on the west coast.

Guess what is happening to that industry? The seawater that they use that is necessary has become acidic, and therefore the shells can't form. It is sort of like, remember what we were doing with DDT and you had eggshells from birds, pelicans, that couldn't get hard? And we eliminated the DDT. We got sensible about that.

Well, we have to get sensible about what we are going to do about ocean acidification. Don Young, our colleague from Alaska, and I are working on a bill, on a substantive bill, for the policy of ocean acidification. But that policy can't be implemented unless the Department carries it out, which the amendment that the gentlewoman has introduced will allow it to do.

I don't know how to put this in any clearer terms, but if our water that we were trying to drink was getting so bad that it was killing people, we did something about it in Congress. We passed a national Clean Water Act that says that you can't do bad things to water that we use for beneficial purposes. When air was getting so bad that people were getting harmed by air, Congress enacted a national air pollution act--the Clean Air Act--and said we have to clean up the air. It certainly was a big impact in California with all the smog in southern California, and we tackled it. We invested money into it, we invested politics into it, and we cleaned up the air in the southern California basin--not perfectly, but it is certainly a lot better than it used to be.

So the point of it here is, look, if we don't pay attention to the ocean and what is happening to the chemistry of the ocean, in the long run our concerns about deficits, war, and pestilence around the world mean nothing because if that ocean gets so toxic, it kills us all, it kills all living things on Earth. Seventy-three percent of the planet is ocean.

So let's begin doing what we have done well in paying attention to clean air and clean water and start thinking about, what is it going to take to pay attention to clean oceans or do no harm or stop dumping into the oceans? Let's not kill one of Earth's life forms that is so important. And particularly, since we get so much sustenance from the oceans in the shellfish industry, let's not kill a private sector business that is managing itself well because we are not paying attention to acidification of our oceans.

So please adopt this amendment. If you are going to withdraw it, I hope we can work something out in conference to pay attention to this very important issue.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and thank Leslie R. White for his lifetime of service to the public transportation industry, including the last 17 years as General Manager of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District, called ``METRO.''

Les took the helm at METRO, which provides bus service to the very transit-dependent communities of Santa Cruz County, CA, at a time of turmoil and molded the agency into a national model. He transformed virtually every aspect of METRO's operations, from replacing an aging diesel fleet with clean fuels buses to adding routes and making existing routes more efficient to improving paratransit service delivery.

Under his leadership, METRO has grown to provide a level of service that makes public transportation in Santa Cruz County a viable alternative to automobile travel. Students from the University of California at Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College are loyal METRO riders, as are the scores of Santa Cruz residents commuting to and from jobs in Silicon Valley on the popular Highway 17 Express.

My first interactions with Les involved working together on the development of MetroBase, the agency's centralized operations and maintenance facility. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed much of METRO's infrastructure and left the system without any adequate facilities. After dealing with the delicate task of finding a suitable site for the new facilities in Santa Cruz, Les worked tirelessly to corral federal, state, and local resources for the MetroBase project that has resulted in long-term savings for the agency.

In addition, I was pleased to have worked closely with Les on the creation of the Small Transit Intensive Cities (STIC) program in the 2005 surface transportation reauthorization law known as SAFETEA-LU. Years earlier, Les came to me with an idea to rectify an imbalance in the way that federal transit funding was allocated to smaller urbanized areas such as Santa Cruz. Now, the STIC program provides additional formula funding to communities with a strong local commitment to public transit, and over 160 communities in 45 states have benefitted from the program since its inception.

Les has dedicated his life to public transportation, and had a long history of achievement prior to his arrival in Santa Cruz. He started his career as a bus driver in his home state of Michigan and rose to lead transit agencies in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Vancouver, Washington. Joining him every step of the way was his wife and best friend Phyllis, who passed away in December 2012.

In 1996, he reached a pinnacle of his profession when he was elected by his peers as Chairman of the American Public Transportation Association, where he also helped develop the popular Leadership APTA program, which helps groom transit professionals for leadership positions in the industry.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Les for his service to Santa Cruz and congratulate him on his well-deserved retirement.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of Representative Gus Bilirakis, my co-chair of the Congressional Travel and Tourism Caucus, and our caucus members Representatives Madeleine Bordallo, G.K. Butterfield, Tony Cardenas, Donna Christensen, Blake Farenthold, Lois Frankel, Tulsi Gabbard, Alan Grayson, Janice Hahn, Colleen Hanabusa, Joe Heck, Ruben Hinojosa, Michael Honda, Jared Huffman, William Keating, Ann Kirkpatrick, Billy Long, Cynthia Lummis, Kristi Noem, Steve Pearce, Pedro R. Pierluisi, Scott Peters, Bill Posey, Dave Reichert, Bobby Rush, Gregorio Sablan, Loretta Sanchez, Steve Stivers, Pat Tiberi, Dina Titus, Juan Vargas, and Frederica Wilson, we offer our support in celebrating this year's National Travel and Tourism Week.

The week of May 3 through 11, 2014 is designated as National Travel and Tourism Week in the United States. This commemorative week reminds us that travel is a major driver of U.S. economic growth and prosperity as well as an important business tool that promotes efficiency and productivity.

America's travel industry accounted for $2.1 billion in economic output in 2013, supported nearly 15 million U.S. jobs and generated nearly $134 billion in local, state and federal tax revenue. Travel and tourism account for 2.7 percent of U.S. GDP and travel is America's No. 1 U.S. industry export.

Travel is a pillar of economic growth. One out of every nine jobs in America depends on travel and tourism. Travel is among the top 10 industries in 49 states, the U.S. Territories, and the District of Columbia in terms of employment. Travel is currently creating jobs at a 17 percent faster rate than other economic sectors. 84 percent of companies in the travel industry are classified as small businesses.

When U.S. travelers spend money in other countries, their purchases are counted as imports. When international travelers visit the United States, the goods and services they purchase here are counted as exports. U.S. travel exports totaled $181 billion in 2013, generating a positive balance of trade of more than $57 billion.

Travel, in the context of business meetings, events and incentive travel, constitutes a core business function that helps companies strengthen business performance, educate employees and customers and reward business accomplishments. Business travel yields a return on investment of $9.50 in increased revenue for every dollar spent.

The majority of all trips taken to and within the United States involve leisure travel, which benefits every state and territory in the country, and was valued at $621.4 billion in 2013, and generated $91.9 billion in tax revenue. Leisure travel can be educational, increase historical and cultural awareness of our country and the world, stimulate creativity and productivity, and enhance longevity by allowing us to recharge our batteries and improve our health and wellness.

We strongly support National Travel and Tourism Week as an opportunity to express to the Nation the importance of travel in creating economic growth and opportunity, and enhancing the quality of life in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Seaside, California. Over the course of the last half century, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church has become a community pillar of the Monterey Peninsula. Service and love are the hallmarks of its congregants and leadership. I can say with unshakeable confidence that the people of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church will continue to be a beacon of service, compassion, and faith in God for another sixty years and beyond.

In 1954, several leaders from Seaside and surrounding communities came together to found a new church. They included Mrs. William Irving, Amy Robinson, Lenora Bean, members of the Felix family, the late Reverend G.E. Ellis, the late Reverend W.F. Bailey, and the Reverend J.W. Harris. The late Reverend G.E. Ellis offered prayer and the group selected the name for the new church that had been suggested the late Sister Edna Felix.

In April 1954, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church services commenced under the leadership of its first Pastor, the Reverend J.W. Harris, at its first Seaside location at 1251 Broadway. The late Reverend J.W. Paige then assumed helm of the Church and helped it grow its congregation and acquire property for a permanent location. Two additional pastors followed in quick succession. The Reverend A.E. Johnson and the Reverend Elroy Day each brought their own particular gift to the Church community, including helping the Church move to 390 Elm Avenue, Seaside, the location that it still calls home today.

In 1961, the Reverend H.H. Lusk, Sr. assumed the pastoral duties of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. The Church community was still small at that time, just 60 members. Under his spiritual and temporal leadership, the Bethel family found many new members. It quickly outgrew its facilities and in 1975, under Reverend Lusk's leadership, the old sanctuary was demolished and replaced with the current sanctuary and classrooms.

Mr. Speaker, the story of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church is a great American story of a family of faith growing from humble beginnings to become a pillar of the community. I know I speak for the whole House in congratulating Reverend H.H. Lusk, Sr. and the whole Bethel Missionary Baptist Church family on 60 years of success and I look forward to many more.

Mr. Chair, thank you very much, Ranking Member Bishop and Chairman Culberson.

I rise as the longest serving member on this subcommittee, and I want to commend you both, the chairman and the ranking member, for your hard work in ensuring that this bill is another significant step in fulfilling our promise to our country that has made these commitments to our veterans that we will leave none of them behind.

This committee has a strong history of working in a bipartisan way to produce a bill that supports our Active Duty servicemembers, our veterans, and their families, and I think this bill is no exception to that.

For example, the VA has taken steps to rectify the deplorable backlog of benefit claims as everyone has mentioned so far. We owe it to our veterans to exercise our constitutional oversight responsibilities to ensure that the VA is actually fixing that backlog.

I am pleased the bill before us today includes language I requested with many of my colleagues that continues additional oversight requirements for the Veterans Benefits Administration and requires regular updates from the VA to Congress on the status of the backlog. Through regular updates from

the VA, we will be able to ensure accountability that will ultimately end the backlog.

Additionally, I am pleased to see the bill recognize that the VA must be able to employ enough mental health providers. For example, as it currently stands, 95 percent of the marriage and family therapists in California, licensed in California, are barred from VA employment under current VA standards, which require a degree from only one specified national accreditation program.

I authored language in the report of the bill, accompanying the bill, to ensure that the VA explore expanding the accreditation requirements by looking at those that are recognized by the Department of Education so that more marriage and family therapists can get to work helping our veterans.

As a final note, I would like to point out that this bill is $1.8 billion below last year's enacted level, but it is only $0.4 billion less than what the President requested.

Thank you.

I am glad to see this bill has been protected from senseless budget cuts. I strongly encourage this Congress to honor the balanced approach that this bill shows in the bipartisan Budget Control Act that we adopted last year.

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

Mr. Chairman, I couldn't disagree more with my respected chairman. This is really a medical issue that ought to be in the hands of medical doctors. It does not allow them to prescribe marijuana. They can prescribe Oxycontin.

What this amendment does, it says if your State has legalized for medical purposes, as a doctor in a VA facility, you can have a discussion with a vet seeking medical advice on whether you ought to have access to--he can't write out the prescription, he doesn't have authority to do that. It is a conversation. It is a discussion. It is a medical conversation.

I don't care whether you are for or against marijuana. That is not the issue here. The issue is--and Mr. Chairman, you know this issue from Eric Seastrand in our California State Legislature who happened to be a Republican assemblyman dying of cancer, he got up and made the most impassioned plea I have ever heard in my life on a legislative floor, saying members--and he was a pretty conservative guy. He said: you know, when you are dying, don't deny us access to hope.

The issue was about getting access to a prescription drug that hadn't yet been licensed. So I think we are in this debate now in this country whether we like it or not. The voters of California overwhelmingly passed--and I think it is pretty much a senior citizen issue--that if we are having chronic pain and if we think medical marijuana can help alleviate that pain, don't deny us access to it.

All this amendment says is that if you are in a VA clinic and you want to have a discussion with your doctor about relieving pain or other things, you can have that conversation.

As a medical adviser, I think they want to have that authority. They can't do it in every State, they can't do it in every VA building, only in those States where the dialogue is going to be on the streets anyway; but they are not going to be professional dialogues unless you allow doctors to do this.

This is a very simple amendment. Let doctors be doctors. Let them advise patients accordingly. Pass this amendment, regardless of how you feel about marijuana.

I yield to the gentleman.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

No, it isn't.

Yes. And so you are going to have the doctor say: I am sorry, you are in a Federal facility. I can't talk to you about a prescription of medical marijuana, even though you have asked the question. I can answer your question about abortions. I can answer your question about Oxycontin. I can answer your question about alcohol. I can talk about any other kind of evil that may be in your mind or benefit that may be in your mind, but I am prohibited by Federal law because I am a doctor in this State working for the Veterans Administration, from having a conversation with you about medical marijuana.

That just doesn't make sense. It is not good medical practice.

Because it is prohibited by Federal law and I happen to be in a State where Federal law ignores this because law enforcement, medical folks, it is part of our system. We have worked out the regulations.

You don't see the Feds coming in and busting clinics in California or people using medical marijuana. You would be busting a lot of senior citizens. Look, we have a hypocrisy in the law. That is what this amendment is trying to clear up. I ask for an ``aye'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 182, I would have voted ``nay'' had the Speaker allowed me to vote at the well. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of my friend George W. Koch who passed away on January 26, at the age of 87.

George William Koch was born on April 8, 1926, in Cincinnati. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he received a bachelor's degree in business in 1948, a bachelor of laws degree in 1950 and a juris doctor degree in 1950, all from the University of Cincinnati.

After working as an assistant city attorney in Cincinnati, George became director of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants before joining Sears and then the Grocery Manufacturers of America.

George led the Grocery Manufacturers of America, GMA, trade association from 1966 to 1990. He was an inspiring leader who led the GMA to become one of the most influential and effective trade associations in America. Last year, George W. Koch received the first- ever Grocery Manufactures Association's Leadership in Public Policy and will name the award in his honor going forward.

As consumers, we all benefit from George's leadership in promoting good practices at stores and grocery chains across America.

Among his countless achievements, George is responsible for leading the initiative at GMA to introduce the Universal Product Code in 1974, and the development of tamper-resistant packaging in the wake of the Tylenol poisonings of 1982.

He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Helen Lawton Koch; his six children, Jorie Koch Kenny, Daniel, Patrick, Robert, Monte, and Lucy Lawton Koch; and 14 grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of my friend George W. Koch and to wish his family peace and solace during this difficult time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a truly great American on the occasion of his retirement from the United States Army. On April 18, 2014, Colonel Daniel D. Pick will relinquish his command of Commandant of the Defense Language Institute for the Presidio of Monterey and retire from the Army after 29 years of exemplary service. It is my great pleasure to have had the opportunity to get to know this soldier scholar. He truly represents for me the highest qualities of military leadership: courage, vision, integrity, and keen understanding of the broader world that we live in. Peace is best served when we can bridge cultures. In light of his commitment to military language capacity, his own language and cultural skills, and his experience as a diplomat and soldier overseas, Colonel Pick, is the personification of this truth.

In 1987, Colonel Pick graduated from the University of Washington and began his Army career as an active duty military intelligence officer. His early career took him many places, including serving as a scout platoon leader and battalion S2 in 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment in Garlstedt, Germany. In addition, he had a deployment to Operations Desert Shield/Storm in January 1991 as S2 3/66 Armor Battalion. Following his graduation from the Military Intelligence Officer Advance Course, Colonel Pick served with 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) as Commander, Military Intelligence Detachment and Group S2.

Colonel Pick became a Middle East Foreign Area Officer (FAO) in 1996. His FAO assignments include: Kuwaiti Land Forces Advisor, OMC-Kuwait; FAO Assignment Officer, Army Human Resources Command, WAD.C.; Executive Officer, Human Intelligence Team, 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Northern Iraq; Army attachee, U.S. Embassy, Amman, Jordan; Policy Officer, Office of the Secretary of Defense; and FAO Program Director, Defense Language Institute.

Colonel Pick holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization from the University of Washington, a Master of Military Studies from Marine Corps University, Quantico, and a Master of Arts degree in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He speaks Arabic, Persian-Farsi, Persian-Dari, and Assyrian. He is a graduate of Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Defense Language Institute Basic Arabic Course, Jumpmaster Course, Military intelligence Officer Basic and Advance Courses, Ranger School and Airborne School. In addition, his decorations include the Combat Action Badge, Bronze Star Medal with an oak leaf cluster, and Iraq Campaign Medal with arrowhead device.

Mr. Speaker, I know I speak for the whole House in extending our most sincere gratitude for Colonel Pick's service to our Nation. The United States is a more secure and fruitful place as a consequence of his efforts. I want to wish Colonel Pick, his wife Karen, and children Dalton and Lauren, all the best as he transitions from active duty to what will surely be an active and fruitful second career of continued public service. And while the Army is losing one of its most capable officers, the Monterey Bay region is retaining one of its most capable citizens.