Sanford Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, every day when I anticipate the Agriculture appropriations bill coming to the floor, I wake up with my usual admonition that this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Today as we take up this Agriculture appropriations bill, it stretches my faith to say that this is a good day because I rise in very, very strong opposition to H.R. 4368. As the ranking member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, I am extremely disappointed to see this bill does not meet the needs of Americans who rely on this funding to ensure safe food and medicines, healthy and resilient farmlands, and strong rural infrastructure. The programs contained in the Agriculture funding bill are important for all Americans, and they affect our country in so many ways. These programs help Americans by helping American farmers produce the highest quality, safest, most abundant, and most economical food and fiber in the world through the assistance provided through the Farm Service Agency in almost every county in America. They help future generations by funding conservation practices, which preserve our farmland and our national resources for years to come. These programs are essential to those who live in rural areas and ensure quality of life through access to clean drinking water, electricity, telecommunication, broadband, sewer infrastructure, and housing. They help feed every American, including our most vulnerable families, children, and seniors in difficult times. They fund USDA meat and poultry inspectors and FDA inspectors of all other food products so that the food on Americans' tables is safe and nutritious. It funds the CFTC and the Farm Credit Administration, so this bill affects our financial space. I cannot think of a funding subcommittee with as broad a reach as our bill has. A bill with such a broad reach deserves to have these programs adequately funded. However, the bill passed in our full committee markup only provided $17.8 billion in funding, which takes us back to the 2007 funding level. That is entirely inadequate for the needs of the American people, and it had no chance of being passed into law when it came out of committee. Unfortunately, rather than moving in a more productive direction, the majority used a procedural gimmick to impose even greater cuts of 69 percent to the Food for Peace program and 14.2 percent to all other discretionary programs. Instead of improving the bill, the Rules Committee made it even worse. In total, the cuts to the bill have reduced funding 41 percent lower than last year. The bill before us today will take us back to 2001 levels. That is totally irresponsible. The bill will harm rural America by taking money from programs supporting rural communities such as it cuts $500 million from the Rural Energy for America Program, the REAP program, and it eliminates grants under the program, which will raise the energy costs for over 15,000 rural farmers and small businesses. It takes $1 billion from rural electric cooperatives, 900 cooperatives that serve over 40 million people in 48 States. It slashes $800 million from the WIC program, which drastically also cuts the cash value voucher benefit for fruit and vegetable purchases, affecting nearly 5 million hungry women and children. It strips loan assistance needed by 100,000 economically distressed farmers, which could literally cost folks the family farm. It cuts rural development programs by over 40 percent, which means thousands of rural families will no longer be able to get a loan to afford a home. Hundreds of projects meant to provide clean water and wastewater systems will be eliminated, and thousands of families will not be able to turn on the tap and count on drinkable water. It completely guts the Food for Peace international food aid program. It cuts the McGovern-Dole program by 14 percent, which will further exacerbate the global hunger and instability and the risk of conflicts abroad, which will weaken American security. The bill also strips the Secretary, as you have heard, of discretionary use of the Commodity Credit Corporation funding. The CCC is a tool authorized by law to benefit our farmers and the thousands of church and community food banks that it helps to fund. No matter which party is in the White House, the only folks that suffer when any administration is not allowed to use the CCC at its discretion are our ag producers and American families. Our farmers benefited tremendously under the Trump administration when Secretary of Agriculture Perdue used the CCC to give our farmers relief from the trade wars with China. As I look at it, the path this bill has taken so far and the proposed amendments that we will see tonight would make it even worse. I ask myself for any farmers that are watching tonight who are trying to do what is best for their land, for their businesses and their family, what will they see? For people in rural communities facing the challenges of providing clean water, affordable housing, and dependable utilities, what will they see? For those same communities trying to ensure that their law enforcement and first responders have the vehicles, the communications equipment, and the other resources they need to keep their rural communities safe, what will they see? For struggling families trying to put food on the table for their children, what will they see? Sadly, if those Americans are watching us tonight, what they will see is a majority which is focused on overriding medical science to take away a woman's freedom to control their own reproductive health choices, but not a majority focused on ensuring that those women and their children are able to afford food. They will see a majority that is focused on an undefined so-called critical race theory while pushing this bill to jeopardize the safety of our food and our medicine, slowing down our supply chain, and ironically, making these things harder to get and more expensive to buy. Make no mistake, the majority would have a person who is watching at home to believe that this bill fights against some undeserving citizens who don't need the help. The hard truth is that this bill is a nuclear bomb against the needs of every single American. The majority wants the people to be distracted by their culture war while they cut the crucial programs that every American depends on for the safest, the highest quality of affordable food, fiber, and medicine in the world. It appears that tonight we will see more amendments from the majority that further push the bill in a terribly harmful direction. It astonishes me that we are 4 days away from a government shutdown, yet we are not debating a bipartisan bill to keep the government open. Instead, we are debating an extreme messaging bill that does nothing to bring us closer to the bipartisan agreement we will need to eventually pass a 4-year government spending bill. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to craft a responsible bill that meets the needs of all Americans. Mr. Chairman, I thank my personal staff, including Tynesha Boomer, and the subcommittee staff, including Martha Foley, Alex Swann, and Tyler Coe for their hard work on this bill. I thank the majority staff for their efforts. I pray that the majority Members of Congress and the majority of Congress will have an epiphany and deliver a much better work product to the American people by the end of this funding process. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me just say that we are in this deficit situation largely because we don't collect the revenue from the people who owe taxes, the wealthy millionaires and billionaires that the Republican majority is protecting by not funding enough agents to collect the money for the Internal Revenue Service so that we can fund the government. We wouldn't have the deficit that we have today were they willing to put sufficient agents on the job to be able to collect the money that is lawfully due. People should pay their taxes and they shouldn't protect those tax cheats. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maine (Ms. Pingree), the ranking member of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, and a member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), the ranking member of the Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, and a member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Every time I hear Republicans talk, they are talking about the cost of everything going up. Assuming, which is not true, that the $6 billion is the same as the last year, they say over and over and over how much the cost of living has gone up, how much more it costs to buy groceries. That is what they talk about every single day when they are not talking about what they want to slash. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), the ranking member of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee and a hardworking member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I hope that the people who are watching tonight will take note of the fact that they don't have to take our word for it. The Congressional Budget Office has scored this bill, and they have scored the manager's amendment. The gentleman says that the bill is $22 billion. After the amendments that they are going to be offering on this bill tonight, CBO has scored it at $15.1 billion. It is clearly not what he is representing. After the manager's amendment, which is the first amendment that we will be considering tonight, the CBO has scored this bill at $15.1 billion, which is a drastic cut to the needs of the American people. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Budzinski).

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, over the past two decades, our country and the agriculture industry have grown. Our population has grown, yet this bill initially withdrew funding for America's agriculture, as you have heard, back to 2006 funding levels with an allocation of $17.1 billion, which is nearly $8 billion below last year's enacted bill. Sadly, we are here tonight with a bill that the majority made even worse this past weekend by gutting Congress' commitment to American farmers, producers, rural communities, and families to levels last seen in 2001. This bill keeps moving in the wrong direction. Also, many of the amendments that we will be debating tonight, which lower this allocation much lower than the American people need, will be an attempt to circumvent the ongoing negotiations in the House authorizing committee, the Agriculture Committee, which is working so desperately to get our farmers, our rural communities, and our lenders in America our 2023 farm bill, which is the blueprint that our farmers and our stakeholders need to plan for agriculture in America going forward. This will jeopardize the consensus that we hope to build and to pass for the 2023 farm bill. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to defeat this bill. Let's send it back to the committee, and let's begin to put together a better work product for the American people. This bill is a disgrace. It really does not rise to the level that the American people deserve. We have to continue to keep our farmers and Americans in a position to consume and produce the highest quality, the safest, the most abundant food and fiber anywhere, and to have the safest medications and medical devices. Mr. Chair, I urge us to defeat this. We need to do better, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this amendment. This amendment includes 42 amendments--5 bipartisan, 17 Republican, 20 Democratic. The agriculture funding bill has historically been a bipartisan bill, and we will need to channel that same cooperation if my colleagues want to pass appropriations bills into law. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for offering the amendments and his cooperation in having this bipartisan en bloc amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Vermont (Ms. Balint).

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Perez).

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez).

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

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment. The amendment would cut funding for the Office of the Chief Economist by an additional 46 percent. That is almost half. The Office of the Chief Economist provides advice and counsel to the Secretary on matters affecting the economy with respect to the Agriculture Department. This bill already guts funding for USDA. Any further cuts just make a bad bill worse. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, when you cut the energy assistance programs for our farmers and our rural communities, you raise the cost of their production. When you raise the cost of their production, you raise the cost of the products they produce to put on the shelves of the grocery stores. This is not a good thing, so I urge the defeat of this amendment, and I urge the defeat of this bill. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, this amendment would cut funding for the Office of Civil Rights at USDA by an additional 19 percent. The bill already guts funding for USDA. Any further cuts would just make a bad bill worse. The Office of Civil Rights at USDA is there for one purpose, and that is to make sure that every American has an equal opportunity to access the programs of USDA regardless of race, regardless of gender, regardless of national origin. USDA over the past decades has been required to pay billions of dollars to folks who were stakeholders who were denied equal opportunities to access these programs. If we cut this, we will be hamstringing the ability of USDA to do the right thing. We want to stop this before it spreads. It has already done too much damage to access for minorities, for women, and for various ethnic minorities, so we must fund this office. I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment. It is another amendment that does nothing to serve farmers, nothing to serve rural America, and it has no place in this bill. We should fund the USDA in a way that makes its programs accessible and available to every single American. Mr. Chair, I urge that this amendment be rejected, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.