Henry Bonilla

Mr. BONILLA

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

Mr. BONILLA. Not at this time, but there may be more coming.

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

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, first, I want to acknowledge that the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Riley) has worked very hard on this issue that is very important to Auburn University, and I would be pleased to work with the gentleman as we go to conference on this issue. It is going to be a difficult issue, and the gentleman and I have had discussions about that before, but we are going to give it our best shot. Again, I know how significant and how important it is to the folks in Alabama.

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Riley).

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo).

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, my friend.

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we are delighted today to be presenting the Agricultural Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2002. I want to acknowledge the good work of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), my ranking member, who has contributed to this process over the last few weeks. It has been a pleasure working with her and all the members of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies on both sides of the aisle. I believe we have produced a good bipartisan bill that deals with a lot of the specific issues that Members are concerned about in their districts around the country, ranging from research projects to inspection issues, to FDA issues, to just any possible issue that has come up. There have been 2500-plus requests from individual Members, and we have done our best to accommodate that. Mr. Chairman, I am just delighted that we have seen good, strong bipartisan support for the effort we have undertaken in putting this bill together. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to bring before the House today the fiscal year 2002 appropriations bill for Agriculture, Rural Development, the Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies. My goal this year has been to produce a bipartisan bill, and I believe we have done a good job in reaching that goal. The subcommittee began work on this bill in early March, before the administration produced its budget. We had 6 public hearings beginning on March 8. The transcripts of these hearings, the administration's official statements, the detailed budget requests, several thousand questions for the record and the statements of members and the public are all contained in six hearing volumes. In order to expedite action on this bill, we completed our subcommittee's hearings on May 6. The subcommittee and full committee marked up the bill on June 6 and June 13 respectively. We have tried very hard to accommodate the requests of Members, and to provide increases for critical programs. We received 2,532 individual requests for specific spending, from almost every Member of the House. Reading all of the mail I received, I can confirm to you that the interest in this bill is completely bipartisan. This bill does have significant increases over fiscal year 2001 for programs that have always enjoyed strong bipartisan support. Those increases include: Agricultural Research Service, $79 million; Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, $55 million; Food Safety and Inspection Service, $25 million; Farm Service Agency, $201 million; Natural Resources Conservation Service, $77 million; and Food and Drug Administration, $120 million. I would like to say that I am very happy that we were able to provide significant increases for the Food and Drug Administration. I think it is vitally important for that agency to have the resources to perform its public health mission. We are able to provide FDA the following increases above last year's level: $15 million to prevent outbreak of BSE, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which is commonly known as ``Mad Cow disease''; $10 million to increase the number of domestic and foreign inspections, and to expand import coverage in all product areas; $10 million to reduce adverse events related to medical products; $10 million to better protect volunteers who participate in clinical research studies; $9 million to provide a safer food supply; $23 million to complete construction of the replacement facility in Los Angeles that we initiated last year; And full funding of increased pay costs for existing employees. I want to stress how important this is. In the past, FDA and all other agencies in this bill were forced to reduce the level of services provided to the public, in order to absorb legislated payroll increases. This year, we want to be sure that does not happen. I am sure that we all want to see that there is no slippage in research, application review, inspections, loan servicing, and all the other payroll-intensive operations that are financed through our bill. We worked hard to find these resources. I am glad we were able to do it, and I am sure the agencies will put them to good use. Mr. Chairman, we all refer to this bill as an agriculture bill, but it does far more than assisting basic agriculture. It also supports human nutrition, the environment, and food, drug, and medical safety. This is a bill that will deliver benefits to every one of our constituents every day no matter what kind of district they represent. I would say to all Members that they can support this bill and tell all of their constituents that they voted to improve their lives while maintaining fiscal responsibility. The bill is a bipartisan product with a lot of hard work and input from both sides of the aisle. I would like to thank the gentleman from Florida, (Chairman Young), and the gentleman from Wisconsin, (Mr. Obey), who serve as the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations. I would also like to thank all my subcommittee colleagues: the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh); the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston); the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt); the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham); the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson); the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goode); the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood); the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro); the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd). In particular, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, for all her good work on this bill this year and the years in the past. Mr. Chairman, I would like to include at this point in the Record tabular material relating to the bill. Mr. Chairman, I include the following Comparative Statement of Budget Authority for the Record: [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH28JN01.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH28JN01.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH28JN01.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH28JN01.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH28JN01.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH28JN01.006 Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BONILLA

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks, and that I may include tabular and extraneous material on H.R. 2330.

Mr. BONILLA

Mr. BONILLA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from yielding me this time, and I thank the ranking member, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), for her hard work. It has been a long, tough road for many of us; but in the end I think we can proudly say this is a bipartisan bill. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the rule, and in strong support of the bill that will follow. This is a good, bipartisan bill. I have worked strongly and consistently as chairman of this subcommittee to try to be inclusive, working closely with every Member on both sides of the aisle to try to address as many of the issues as we possibly could in putting this bill together. Our subcommittee heard many hours of testimony in previous days to get to this point. Many of the hours we spent listening to witnesses involved food safety, and that is something that both of us have worked on, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and I, to address these issues. There is great concern in the communities about the threats that exist from diseases that are now prevalent in other countries, primarily in Europe, that many of us are concerned about. Livestock producers, especially with the threat of foot-and-mouth disease and mad cow disease, are concerned, and we have addressed many of these concerns. We have worked in a bipartisan way to increase the number of inspectors for the Food and Drug Administration to give them more resources to do their job. All of the inspection accounts that are important to keep our food supply and our industry safe from threats from abroad we have addressed in a strong way, and I think I speak for every member of the subcommittee as well, who would agree. It has been a tough road as well because we have received over 2,500 individual requests for projects from individual Members around the country. We have done our best to try to take care of everyone that we possibly could. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) mentioned the reference to an amendment involving apples. We know that apple producers are facing a tremendous problem right now in trying to deal with some adverse conditions that they are faced with. This was an amendment presented by our good friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), who has worked very hard on this issue; and this amendment has bipartisan support. Honestly, the Members know that we have tried to keep these authorizing issues and new programs off of our appropriations bill; but in this case, the committee worked its will. And we have this program in this bill. We know that there will be some contentious times in trying to deal with this as we move through this bill, but we expect to do that. All in all, I think we can all stand up and say we are proud of what we have accomplished here. The Committee on Rules has also worked very hard to deal with some of the problems in moving this bill to the floor. Again I want to thank the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), and all the members of the Committee on Rules for taking a lot of time and energy to get us to this point and hope that, in a bipartisan way, we can support the rule and the bill.

Mr. BONILLA

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Speaker, that is correct.

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during further consideration of H.R. 2330 in the Committee of the Whole pursuant to House Resolution 183, no further amendment to the bill may be offered except the following amendments, each of which shall be debatable for 10 minutes: An amendment offered by Mrs. Clayton related to rental assistance, which may be offered at any time during consideration; an amendment offered by Mr. Traficant related to Buy American; an amendment offered by Mr. Allen related to total cost of research and development and approvals of new drugs; an amendment offered by Ms. Kaptur related to the biofuels; an amendment offered by Ms. Kaptur related to BSE; an amendment offered by Ms. Kaptur related to 4-H Program Centennial; an amendment offered by Mr. Lucas of Oklahoma related to watershed and flood operations; an amendment offered by Mrs. Mink of Hawaii related to the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center; an amendment offered by Mrs. Mink of Hawaii related to the Oceanic Institute of Hawaii; an amendment offered by Mr. Blumenauer related to price supports; an amendment offered by Mr. Royce related to allocations under the market access program; an amendment offered by Mr. Smith of Michigan related to the Food Security Act; an amendment offered by Mr. Smith of Michigan related to the Agriculture Market Transition Act; an amendment offered by Mr. Smith of Michigan related to the nitrogen-fixing ability of plants; an amendment offered by Mr. Baca related to Hispanic-serving institutions; an amendment offered by Ms. Pelosi related to HIV. Two, the following additional amendments, each of which shall be debatable for 20 minutes: An amendment offered by Mr. Brown related to abbreviated applications for the approval of new drugs under section 505(j) of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act; an amendment offered by Mr. Stupak or Mr. Boehlert related to elderly nutrition; an amendment offered by Mrs. Clayton related to socially disadvantaged farmers. Three, the following additional amendments, each of which shall be debatable for 30 minutes: An amendment offered by Mr. Hinchey related to American Rivers Heritage; an amendment offered by Mr. Kucinich related to transgenic fish; an amendment offered by Mr. Gutknecht related to drug importation. Four, the following additional amendments, each of which shall be debatable for 40 minutes: An amendment offered by Mr. Sanders related to drug importation; an amendment offered by Mr. Weiner related to mohair. Five, the following additional amendment, which shall be debatable for 60 minutes, and which may be brought up at any time during consideration: An amendment offered by Mr. Olver or Mr. Gilchrest related to Kyoto. Each additional amendment may be offered only by the Member designated in this request, or a designee; shall be considered as read; shall be debatable for the time specified equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent; shall not be subject to amendment; and shall not be subject to a demand for a division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole.

Mr. BONILLA

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I apologize for the confusion that we had a few minutes ago, and we would be delighted to accept the amendment of the gentlewoman from North Carolina.

Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. BONILLA

Mr. BONILLA. The gentleman is correct, Madam Speaker.

Mr. BONILLA. Madam Speaker, the vast majority of my constituents, although I have areas that are also several hundred miles from the border.

Mr. BONILLA. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, not any more than I would have a concern about an American truck coming through. Let me also just add, if I could, to the gentleman from Kentucky, I would challenge any Member here who continues to pursue this action against Mexico, next time they speak about this issue, and the television camera is on them, I challenge them to look that camera in the eye and tell us that they are not discriminating against Mexico and border area residents.

Mr. BONILLA. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. BONILLA. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am aware of that. I am aware of that, because I know all of us are concerned about having the highest standards complied with by anyone who drives trucks in our country.

Mr. BONILLA. Madam Speaker, I am not aware of any such problems that have existed, not to create a premise on which to file any complaints. These are simply scare tactics and, as I have pointed out, targeted just against Mexico, nothing mentioned about Canada.

Mr. BONILLA. Yes, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.