Rosa DeLauro

Ms. DeLAURO

Ms. DeLAURO. Point of order.

Ms. DeLAURO. The gentleman's remarks need to be confined to the issue at hand, the matter at hand. The amendment has to do with the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture.

Ms. DeLAURO. That is exactly what I'm doing. The amendment at hand, the McHenry amendment, to increase the Gingrey amendment from $50,000 to $100,000. We have debated it. It has been accepted.

Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman. I want to make the point that it is really laughable to talk about dilatory. It really is. It is now not an hour and a half, it is almost 2\1/2\ hours on an amendment that has been accepted and a secondary amendment that has been accepted by the Committee for the Department of Agriculture. The cuts have been made. Point of Order

Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Ms. DeLAURO. And it has been accepted.

Ms. DeLAURO. Is it not true that the issue is whether or not there is $50,000 or $100,000 that is to be cut, and that is the issue at hand, and that is the issue that ought to be addressed?

Ms. DeLAURO. The gentleman is engaged in irrelevant debate and is not speaking about the issue at hand, the Agriculture appropriations bill.

Ms. DeLAURO. Point of order.

Ms. DeLAURO. My colleague is supposed to keep his comments to the business at hand before the Committee, not what business the House will consider in the coming days; is that not true, Madam Chair?

Ms. DeLAURO. Point of order.

Ms. DeLAURO. It has been ruled over and over again on this floor that the gentleman has to keep his remarks in the context of the bill, the Agriculture appropriations bill that is being discussed.

Ms. DeLAURO. Point of order.

Ms. DeLAURO. I would just like to say what I stated earlier: That in fact what we did in the subcommittee is to cut the central office at the Agriculture Department by 16 percent. If that is not good enough for you, I accept this amendment. You have an opportunity to withdraw it, if you would like, but I am happy to accept it. Or you can sit and you can stand and you can continue just running your mouth here on the issue of the amendment. I have accepted it the second time around.

Ms. DeLAURO

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I, too, want to say thank you to my colleague, Mr. Kingston, in working with him; and it is not the first time we have had an opportunity to work together. We have been working together over the years. As I said, I am very proud of the bill and the goals that we set out and the direction that we set out to strengthen rural America and deal with our public health and nutrition, energy, conservation and looking at how we invest in our research. I look forward to the balance of our time and the amendment process, but I do, too, want to associate myself with my colleague from Georgia's remarks about our colleague on the committee, Mr. LaHood, who has been an outstanding member of this committee but has been an outstanding Member of the House of Representatives, someone you could always count on to speak his mind but to be fair and to do his best for his constituents and for this Nation. I also want to say thank you to the many staffers who have worked hour after hour on this bill to make today possible. As a former staff member, I know that these efforts don't come together by some alchemy, but it is because of the incredible hard work that people put into it over many, many hours. And let me thank Martha Foley, subcommittee Clerk; as well as Leslie Barrack; Diem-Lihn Jones; Adrienne Simmonson; Kelly Wade; Brian Ronholm, my staff. Also, Ashley Turton, my Chief of Staff; and Leticia Mederos, Legislative Director. I also want to say thank you to Martin Delgado, Dave Gibbons, and Jamie Swafford on the minority staff. I thank everyone for their time and their patience in putting this effort together. I believe nothing could be more important for us to move forward on this bill and get it passed. I think it is in the best interest of this Nation. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.048 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.053 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.054 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.056 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH31JY07.057

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am pleased to present to the House for fiscal year 2008 the appropriations bill For Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and related agencies. I want to say ``thank you'' to Chairman David Obey for his dedication and leadership. It has been a very busy 7 months, and we have been fortunate to have Chairman Obey at the helm. A special ``thank you'' to my colleague, Congressman Kingston. It has been a pleasure to partner with him on this subcommittee, and I believe that we have accomplished a lot together. We are working to accomplish quite a lot today, with quite a wide- ranging portfolio. This appropriation covers many subjects. Our top priority has always been to move with a clear purpose and direction towards several key goals: strengthening rural America, protecting public health, improving nutrition for more Americans, transforming our energy future, supporting conservation, investing in research, and, finally, enhancing oversight. It begins with our fiscal year 2008 mark providing total discretionary resources of $18.8 billion, $1 billion, or 5.7 percent, above 2007, and $987.4 million, or 5.5 percent, above the budget request. A full 95 percent of the increase above the budget request, or $940 million, is used to restore funding that was either eliminated or cut in the President's budget. Our first goal is strengthening rural America. Community development is a key link to rebuilding rural America, preserving infrastructure, building new opportunities, and confronting a tremendous gap when it comes to educational and medical resources. To help close that gap, the bill provides $52.8 million. That would double the broadband grant program which the President's budget request had eliminated. It provides $10 million more than the President requested for distance learning and telemedicine grants and includes $728.8 million to support community facilities, water and waste disposal systems, and business grants; $31.2 million for community facilities; $56.8 million for business and industry; and $70.3 million for waste and waste disposal programs. Clean water. Rural communities face tens of billions of dollars in costs for safe drinking water and wastewater treatment systems. To begin addressing these needs, the bill provides $500 million for rural water and waste disposal grants and $1 billion for water and waste direct loans. In housing, the community held a special hearing to discuss economic conditions in rural America with the USDA's Economic Research Service. A recent ERS report found that 302 of America's non-metro counties are ``housing stressed.'' That is why we are making significant investments in rural housing, including $212.2 million to fund $5.1 billion in affordable loans to providing housing to low-income and moderate-income families in rural areas, providing approximately 38,000 single family home ownership opportunities. The President's budget eliminated direct loans and shifted funding to guaranteed loans with a 1 percent increase in fees, making these loans more expensive and less accessible for low- income families. Protecting public health was another of our priorities. The bill provides $1.7 billion for the Food and Drug Administration. That is $128.5 million over 2007 and $62 million over the budget request; in addition, $7 million in the manager's amendment in order for us to be able to inspect produce coming in from foreign countries. This is what the committee hopes will be the first step in the fundamental transformation and the regulation of food safety at FDA. The committee directs the FDA to submit a plan to begin changing its approach to food safety when it submits the fiscal year 2009 budget, giving the committee time to review the plan before the funds to implement it become available on July 1, 2008. We can help with additional resources at FDA, but there also needs to be a corresponding commitment from management to perform its duties. When our pets began to die from contaminated pet food that originated in China, the news forced us to take a hard look at entire food safety systems abroad. Our renewed attention revealed inadequate protection and an increasingly global food supply system. The budget includes an additional $7 million, as I said, for FDA inspection of FDA imports. In addition, we address vacancies in Federal meat inspector positions. The bill fully funds the requested amount for the food safety and inspection service at $930 million. The bill also includes key language preventing the FDA from granting waivers of conflict of interest rules to voting members of the FDA advisory committee, and preventing USDA from establishing or implementing a rule allowing poultry products from China into the United States. The Chinese and others must be aware that trade cannot trump public health and that their regulations need to be strengthened to be considered an adequate trading partner. Another of our top priorities is improving nutrition. For many long years we have failed to meet our obligations, failed to act, while too many Americans have gone without adequate healthy food. One in eight families with a toddler, an infant, in the United States is ``food insecure''; that means that they are hungry. One in eight families with an infant. Forty percent of children in rural America are dependent upon food stamps. The progress we made on this issue with the farm bill last week represents real change, and this bill includes $39.8 billion for the Food Stamp program to meet increased participation and ensuring rising food prices do not diminish families' purchasing power. The bill also provides record funding for two fundamental food security programs which serve our country's most vulnerable population, the supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, WIC, and the Commodities Supplemental Food Program, CSFP. These efforts go hand in hand with ongoing initiatives, including $957.7 million for nutrition programs to confront our Nation's obesity crisis, instilling better eating habits in our children, giving them the tools and the choices to avoid diabetes and other dangerous health conditions. That includes $68.5 million for the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, $26 million to expand the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable and Simplified Summer Food Programs to all States, and $10 million for specialty crops. What are specialty crops? They are related to healthy diets in this Nation; fruits and vegetables that are farmed in my part of the country, in the mid-Atlantic States, in California, crops that are so crucial nationwide from New England to the west coast. Our work continues with other chief goals. Energy independence. This bill makes investments across the spectrum to grow our economy, create new jobs, lower energy prices and address global warming. It promotes renewable energy and moves us down the path to energy independence, strengthening bioenergy and renewable energy research funded at $1.2 billion, including loans and grants in rural areas. The conservation and stewardship of our lands will affect our children for years to come. This bill restores many of the programs slated for elimination in the President's request, including the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative, the Wildlife Habitat Program, and watershed rehabilitation, and provides $979.4 million to continue assistance to landowners for conservation efforts on private lands. We also have an obligation to maintain agriculture's critical place at the forefront of groundbreaking research, maintaining our edge in crop development, competitiveness, trade, nutrition, food safety and even homeland security. The bill increases funds for research and education through USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service and the Agricultural Research Service. Finally, enhanced oversight. The committee is concerned about waste, fraud and abuse in key programs and has included language requested by the administration to allow the Risk Management Agency to use up $11.2 million in mandatory crop insurance funds to strengthen its ability to oversee the program by maintaining and upgrading IT systems and other methods of detecting dubious claims. In closing, I think we should be excited about this bill, the goals that we set out to accomplish: strengthening rural America, protecting our public health, improving nutrition for more Americans, transforming our energy future, supporting conservation, investing in research, and finally, enhancing oversight. Most importantly, I believe it brings us back to our Nation's most fundamental principles; the strength of our communities. We have an obligation to get these things right. Let us assume that responsibility today, Mr. Chairman, and I'm pleased to submit this bill and I urge favorable consideration. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson). (Mr. JACKSON of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Ms. DeLAURO. I think my colleague from Georgia maybe doesn't understand what bill is on the floor today. This is the Agriculture appropriations bill. There will be an opportunity to discuss SCHIP, and you can continue to do that, but let me just comment about your Agriculture appropriations amendment. The House bill includes funding for central administration offices to fund current staff. The only increase is for pay costs. And I might just tell you that for all of the staff offices in central administration, that the work that was done by the committee literally cut these offices by about 16 percent. So it was just pay and benefits. However, you should know I feel the obligation to mention these things to you, that any cuts in these offices will result in the reduction of headquarters staff, not the field staff, because that's the personnel that deals directly on a one-to-one basis with our farmers and with our ranchers so that they can access the system and be able to do what they need to do. Now, I'm going to give the gentleman an opportunity to withdraw his amendment, because I am prepared to accept your amendment, and I'm happy to accept your amendment. Parliamentary Inquiry

Ms. DeLAURO. We have accepted the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I would just say we have accepted the amendment. Mr. Chairman, clearly, as the Chair of the committee pointed out, this is a filibuster to talk about another issue. Now, you can continue to do that. The sooner you stop filibustering, the sooner we can move on. We have accepted the amendment. But that is up to you.

Ms. DeLAURO

Ms. DeLAURO. I just want to let the gentleman from Kansas understand about feeding programs in the United States, and I will get a copy for you, send it over to you, something called the Carsey report that just came about a week, a week and a half ago, which talks about 40 percent, 40 percent of children in rural America are dependent on food stamps. This bill has gone a great distance to address the issues of rural America, including the farm issues of trying to link what is produced on the land with those who are in need of food, trying to deal with an opportunity to create a more stable economy in rural America when the President's budget, in fact, has left rural America pretty much decimated; $940 million of this bill and this increase has been placed to restore the programs mainly in rural America that the administration had either cut back or eliminated.

Ms. DeLAURO

Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3161, and that I may include tabular material on the same.

Ms. DeLAURO

Ms. DeLAURO. Lilly Ledbetter was shortchanged; shortchanged by her employer, by consistent pay discrimination lasting years; shortchanged again by the Supreme Court with its decision limiting a woman's ability to sue their employers for pay discrimination under title VII of the Civil Rights Act. As Justice Ginsburg suggested in her dissent, Congress now has an obligation to correct the Court's decision. That's why we are here, to make it clear the title VII statute of limitations runs from the date a discriminatory wage is actually paid, not simply some earliest possible date which has come and gone long ago. I commend Congressman Miller for acting with urgency to correct the injustice. It is time to value the work that women do in our society, respecting the work that women do, and to value it. ``The plant manager at Goodyear said, The plant did not need women, women did not help it, and women caused problems.'' The President's threat to veto this legislation suggests he is happy to limit women's access to equal pay. Let's turn this around, fix the decision and make sure that women who face discrimination, like Lilly Ledbetter faced, have a right to fight against it.