Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, Oklahoma is the leading producer in this country of Spanish peanuts. Last year peanut production in this country coming off the farm generated $1 billion in revenue. The cost of peanuts in our country and the products that come from there end up being twice as high as they are worldwide. Now, this amendment asks the question, we have a subsidized peanut program in this country that generates a billion dollars of revenue off the farm each year for peanuts. Why would we want to spend $300,000 on peanut competitiveness when we already know the reasons why we are not competitive in peanuts? It is because we have an oversupply and that we have tried to manage the problems with this oversupply through a subsidy program. Again, here is $300,000 that is directed for research on why we are not competitive worldwide on peanuts when we already know the answer. So I would again go back to the fact that here is $300,000 that could be better spent, that could be better directed at other areas of research, that could in fact be used to help farmers directly rather than to set up a competitive research program when we already clearly know the answer. The problem in peanuts is, we have to slowly wean away from this false market, and we all know that; and as my colleagues know, I do not want a peanut producer in my State to have to go out of business. I understand the friction and the rub associated with these big problems for our farmers, but to turn around and to spend that kind of money in terms of our subsidy programs, and then to turn around, and those are mandatory spending, to turn around and to spend $300,000 to tell us what we already know makes no sense. I would rather see that $300,000 go directly to farmers, corn farmers, wheat farmers, soybean farmers or cattle ranchers who are competing with a market that is coming in from Canada, that ignores any type of testing, any type of standards that the rest of our ranchers have to have. If we really want our ag research directed to help our farmers, then we will not have $300,000 set up for competitive peanut research, and instead we will spend that money somewhere else. We do. We are demonstrating that we trust the committee because we are not taking this total amount out of the research. We are saying put it somewhere else, but do not spend it on a program that keeps us at the seat of political favors rather than at the best efforts for our farmers. As my colleagues know, the real debate is, we have allocations of money set for agriculture that I think is really a little too much. That is what I have been trying to do, get $250 million out of this bill because I think that is the only way we are going to meet our commitment to the seniors of not spending their money. But colleagues cannot claim that they did their job for the whole Congress, we as a body and the Committee of the Whole, if we meet a 302(b) here knowing that we have no intentions of meeting those allocations, that 302(b) allocation, on the four biggest bills that are going to come before us. It is not intellectually honest for us to say that. We know that this committee has worked hard. I am sorry that we are where we are, but the fact is, if we made a commitment when the Democrat budget was offered, the commitment was made not to touch Social Security money. When the Republican budget was offered, the commitment was made not to touch Social Security. When the President's budget was offered, which I offered because nobody from the other side would offer his budget, two Members of this House agreed to spend 38 percent of the Social Security money. They are the only two people in this body that have the right to have this process go through the way it is setting up, because they already said, ``We don't believe you can do that. We believe we ought to spend more money.'' The rest of us voted to say we would not spend one penny of Social Security surplus. So for us to be in the position where we are going to allow a process to go forward that we know is going to deny the American people what we want them to have is the very thing that I am tired of in Washington. It is my hope that we will return to the American people the confidence they deserve to have in this body. And if we say we are not going to spend their Social Security money, we should not spend it.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, throughout the Federal Government we have multitudes of agencies and departments and grants and billions of dollars that are being spent on global change and global climate change. We happen to have in this bill a million dollars in an isolated little pocket that is going to go to study, within the Department of Agriculture through a grant, global change. It makes no sense to appropriate any money for global change through the appropriations process in ag when we have the vast majority, 99.9 percent of the rest of the money, being spent on this issue in other departments. The question that I would have is, should we be spending a million dollars of Social Security money on global change in such an inefficient way? A million-dollar grant on such a large area of science and research today can in no way be spent efficiently, and I would pull this back. Is this money that has to be spent, that needs to be spent at this time and in this manner, and is it the best way to spend this million dollars? As my colleagues know, we recently saw some of the results of some of the research on global change. We have a Kyoto Treaty that is being implemented by the administration that has never been approved by the Senate in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States. We have a Kyoto Treaty that is going to take jobs away from Americans because it is going to make us live at one standard and the rest of the world, developing world, live at a different standard. We are throwing a million dollars for a favor for somebody on global change, one isolated, small grant program that is going to make no difference whatsoever in the overall study and effect on this issue; and so my question and the reason I have this amendment is that this is not going to accomplish its purpose, this is not going to further our research on global change, it is not going to be a wise use of a million dollars of taxpayers' money, and in fact will encourage us to do the same thing in other areas. The next time somebody's constituent comes from my area, who wants something for a university for a grant, they are going to say, Well, they did it on this one; why will they not do it here? It is not a wise use of our money. As my colleagues know, we have a lot of seniors out there. There is no question we are going to provide them with their Social Security checks, and I do not want anybody to be able to say that I am trying to scare the first senior into thinking they are not going to get their Social Security. They are. We are going to meet that commitment. But we cannot say that to our children, and anybody in this body that says they can, they have to come up with a plan to do that, and the first plan to do that is to not spend the revenues that are coming into this country, into the Treasury, for Social Security. So I would ask the chairman and I would ask the ranking member to consider this amendment as a good amendment. This $1 million will not ever contribute positively to the situation on global change. What it will do is send a million dollars of taxpayers' money to somebody else, and it will generate some research; but will it in fact have an impact on the very thing that it was directed for? And I would challenge someone to tell me that out of the billions and billions of dollars that we spend in other areas through the EPA and other areas, how $1 million for one grant system is going to make a difference in terms of global change. As my colleagues know, in World War II this country recognized that we had an obligation to fight that war, and we downsized every aspect of our Federal Government because we had an emergency. Now we have a war going on, and it is not near the emergency that World War II was, but we have another emergency. And that emergency is whether or not our children are going to have the same standard of living that we have had the opportunity to have. Unless we address the issue of spending Social Security money, unless we address the issues associated with Medicare and Social Security, and unless we pay attention to that in every dollar that we spend, whether that comes out in one appropriation bill or all of them, or whether it is at the end of the year, unless we are good stewards of that money, that emergency will overwhelm our children. And everybody in this body knows that; they know that the baby boomer bust is coming as far as Social Security and Medicare. So we cannot deny it.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say very specifically that I believe that they are mistakenly pointing this out. What this amendment really does is it will eliminate the million dollars and allow $1 million to go back into the general research against the $13 million losses.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, if my colleagues will turn the page to page 14, they will see that we did not amend the total amount of research. Therefore, the million dollars is reduced in that one area, but the total amount of research is left the same. My colleagues will notice, on line 19, on page 14, that we did not amend $467,327,000.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman from North Carolina yield? I just want to answer the last statement, if I may.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to support Oklahoma State research for that only if they can help me cut some spending from somewhere else.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. COBURN. The gentleman does realize that this does not decrease total agricultural research by one penny. It just says we should not spend this money here. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) for his courtesies. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief in what I have to say about this amendment. We have a $300,000 expenditure for peanut competitiveness. We have a subsidized peanut program that produces $1 billion worth of raw peanuts off the farm a year. The prices of peanut-graded products in our country are higher than what they would be if we did not have a subsidized peanut program. I have voted in the past for the subsidized peanut program. I have lots of peanut farmers. That does not mean in the future that we should not try to change that and wean that to a competitive model where we have the appropriate amount of production and a competitive international model on that. My point with this amendment is we know why we are not competitive on peanuts; why would we want to fund $300,000 to answer that question?

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I have every intention of withdrawing this amendment and reoffering it. Whether the gentleman objects or not, I will still have the privilege of reoffering the amendment.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, the clerk has actually read the wrong line items. It is actually page 14, line 16. The Clerk read page 13, line 11. Our amendment was actually page 14, line 16. They happen to have the same amount of money, and therefore it was read as an inappropriate amendment. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment and offer the amendment as offered on the right line item.

Mr. COBURN. If the gentlewoman would yield, if we had that capability, we would not be here.

Mr. COBURN. The 302(b) allocations are prepared by certain groups within here, and those are the ones we object to. It is not the budget that we object to.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I hope the chairman and ranking member will bear with me on this amendment. I do intend on withdrawing this amendment at some point in the discussion, but I think the American people need to know about the increase in agricultural research. I agree with many of the increases that are in there, but I think it is going to do us a good job of informing the American people where we actually spend this money. This is a $50 million increase that this committee has put in for agricultural research. I want to put it in light of the real issues of why we are trying to trim this budget back to last year's level. I am going to say again, for our seniors out there that are watching and for our children that are watching, that are going to pay the bills for the money that we spend above the caps and the Social Security money that ends up getting spent this year despite the fact that we made a commitment to not spend that money: The graph that you see to the left shows what is going to happen to Social Security revenues. The bars that you see in the black are the increase in the number of dollars that are coming in over expenditures, the amount of money that comes in minus the amount of money that goes out for Social Security payments. In 2014 we see a tremendous change. We start seeing red show up. That money, that red, is indicative of the amount of money that is going to have to come from the general fund, not the Social Security fund, to meet the obligations for Social Security. Where is that money going to come from? That money is going to come from increased payroll taxes on our children. The Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Administration estimate that if we stay on the track that we are staying right now, that in fact our children and grandchildren most likely will be paying twice in payroll taxes as they pay today just to meet the requirements of the baby boomers. I happen to be a baby boomer. I was born in 1948. I was a product of the postwar greatness that came in this country in terms of we came back from the war and were allowed to have children and our material standard of living rose greatly. Our commitment in this body, both by the budget that the Democrats provided and the Republicans provided, everybody committed that we would not touch one dollar of Social Security money, not one dollar. Yet we are on a track to make sure that we spend about $45 billion of that money this year. Most people know that but they are not willing to say it. They are not willing to admit that the 302(b) allocations that have been put out will actually in the long run spend Social Security money. I think that it is unfair to the American public to say that we are going to go through an appropriations process that is going to protect Social Security and protect 100 percent of the dollars in that, when in fact in our heart we know that Washington is not going to live up to that commitment. That commitment is a secure, honorable commitment to the seniors of this country. But, more importantly, it is a commitment to our children and our grandchildren. If you ask the seniors in this country, the people that won World War II, do they want to burden their grandchildren with a FICA tax rate that is twice what they paid so that we can meet the mere obligations of Social Security, they are going to say no. And if you ask them what if we just trim spending a little bit more in Washington so that does not happen, they will all say yes. I am a grandfather. I will do almost anything for my grandchildren. I will make whatever physical, material sacrifice that I need to make for my grandchildren. The question that we have before us and the debates that we have before us today are about whether or not we are going to do that. Agriculture is a very important part of our country. I have said when we discussed this bill and when we discussed the rule, this is a good bill. My hope is to make it somewhat better so that we are back to last year's level, so that we have a chance to fulfill our commitment to the American people by not spending Social Security money. Just so that everybody can know, here is 1999.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, he is on the Committee on Appropriations, but he is also from Oklahoma, and he also would have to support that, should that come. When I make a request, and please go and look at my request, I specifically request things that I ask for. I mean what I say and say what I mean; I think the gentlewoman knows that. I am very cautious with how I do it. I want to answer one other point. We made legislative history when I specifically asked this amendment to take $1 million for a specific amendment. So that means no money is going to come out of breast cancer research; it is going to come out of that one specific amendment. I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) for yielding to me.

Thomas Coburn

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