Sam Farr

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. Reclaiming my time, with all due respect, I don't think the Agriculture Committee created the Brazilian problem. It was not the committee's act that created it. It was what the Brazilians did in their ability to become a major agricultural production country. And they are going after production in other countries. They have got connections with their government much closer between producers and government than we have here. They are buying out companies. They are going to really try to affect farm prices in the United States. I will tell you, the next place they are going to go after is specialty crops. So I am not a big fan, as you know. I spoke last night with concerns about getting these payment limitations down and to essentially trying to find a better program that is not so costly to the taxpayers. But you don't do anything beneficial with this money, you just cut it. And I am here to do things using money, taxpayers' money, to do the wise thing. It doesn't affect the outcome at all. It just penalizes certain people that happen to be in the cotton business. And I don't think that I want to support an amendment that isn't constructive. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. I strongly support this amendment because the language in the bill--I'm going to read it to you. It's one paragraph, but it's the most draconian language because we've never done this before ever in an ag bill. It says: ``The committee directs the Department to provide an electronic notification to the committee at least 72 hours prior to any travel in support of the Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food initiative, and such notification shall include the agenda of the entire trip along with the cost to U.S. taxpayers. Additionally, the committee directs the Department to post media advisories for all such trips on its Web site, and that such advisories include the same information.'' My God, we don't do this to know your soldier, to know your veteran, to know your school teacher, to know anybody else that's in the public service, to know your law enforcement officer; and yet they're doing this for Know Your Farmer? This program, as Mr. Kingston pointed out, we just had the ag report come out and I'm very proud that one county in my district does $4 billion worth of agriculture, as pointed out in that report, that grows 59 percent of all the lettuce consumed in the United States in one county in California that I represent. Part of that is this program now that they're doing, which is Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food. Consumers can go with their cell phones into a grocery store; and because of the barcode there, they can ZIP it and it immediately comes up the farmer who grew that food saying this is who I am and this is where I grew it and this is how many days it takes to get to you, and all the things you might want to--if we're going to educate people about nutrition, I can't think of a more exciting way to do it. And to require that the Department has to essentially do this gestapo, looking at every time you move you have to report to a higher authority on your initiative and on your entire trip and the agenda and cost, we don't do that for anybody else in the Federal Government, and I don't think we should do it for our farmers or for our members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture who are supporting our farmers. So I support this amendment very strongly. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FARR. I wasn't going to rise on this amendment--and I probably shouldn't--but this discussion just bugs me. I represent more productive agriculture in my district than anyone in this room--$4 billion in just one county--and I represent a bunch of counties. What we grow are specialty crops. We grow 85 crops in Monterey County. As we were talking about earlier, 58 percent of all the lettuce in the United States is grown in that county. We grow 35 different varieties of wine grapes, and we are the leading counties in strawberry production and in a bunch of berry productions. In fact, our motto there is that we're the ``salad bowl capital of the world,'' which includes all of the ingredients in salad--celery, lettuce. All those things, we grow. Do you know what? They don't get a dime of support from the Federal Government. If the market falls, they eat it. If a disaster comes in, they eat it. So the reason these amendments are brought up by Mr. Kind and Mr. Blumenauer year after year is that, frankly--do you know what?--the farm bill doesn't address this issue. It really doesn't. It's too tough--it's too politically tough--and there are too many vested interests in this town. You have a whole bunch of agriculture out there, and some people would suggest that more than all of the money created in commodity supports is in what they call ``specialty crops,'' and that's the stuff you eat all the time. You can't have this bifurcated world out there where you have a bunch of people who are essentially on welfare and a bunch of people who are just assuming all the risk. What really surprises me is that, with the conservative side of the aisle over here that really is driven toward market approaches to solve problems, this is not a market approach. This is a subsidy. It's a taxpayer subsidy, and it's going to very wealthy people in some cases. So I am rising to say this amendment, as in the past, gets defeated; but these gentlemen have an issue, and I just beg with the leaders. I've got great respect for the ranking member of the Ag Committee here on our side of the aisle. I know he can wrestle with these problems. He's a CPA. He knows these things. I think the handwriting is on the wall. If the conservatives on your side of the aisle would take this on as an issue that Americans are really going to address, we may get some progress on the farm bill. If you don't, you're abandoning your marketing concepts, and you're abandoning what is needed in modern America. Just remember, that apple, that pear, that banana in there, that celery, the strawberries--the list goes on and on with all the fruits and vegetables--they don't get any of these payments. So let's not have a bifurcated agricultural production out there where half of it depends on taxpayer payments and the other half has to just live by market forces. Let's have everybody a lot more influenced by market forces. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition because I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you are so afraid of Know Your Farmer-- Know Your Food. They say, well, we need to have this program authorized. My God, we went to war without authorizing it. We spent all that money, and half the people don't even question it. And you want to question Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food? I think this is a direct attack on the White House initiative, which is about nutrition, which is about trying to get people--I mean, we talked about this yesterday, about how you have places in this country that are food deserts. You have places where there are no grocery stores. There are 7-Elevens. They don't have fresh fruits and vegetables. People can't go down to a local store and find fresh fruits and vegetables. So what do we do? This committee puts money into the USDA to help farmers markets get established in these tough areas, to encourage farmers to come in, and at the same time teach people who have never shopped for fresh fruits and vegetables, never been to a farmers market. We have actually tied in, in my district, the issuing of food stamps and WIC vouchers so that they will spend them right there, and 65 percent of the income that comes to the farmers at the farmers markets comes from them. So this is all part of the initiatives to get people to know about agriculture. Milk doesn't come from a carton. Food doesn't come from a grocery store. It gets grown somewhere by a farmer, he and his wife. And we are trying to get kids to know something about agriculture. We are putting in school gardens. All of this is part of Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food, and you want to strike it. What is this? Is this some kind of conspiracy that you are afraid of? People might learn a little bit about where food comes from in America, and there is organic food and that you have choices and you just don't have to eat everything that is packaged and processed and full of salts and sugars and additives and preservatives? What are we afraid of? What are we afraid of? My God, to strike it, or tell the department that they can't do this, I think it is not in our best intentions, and it is not smart nutrition. We are trying to get people, I know, because I am trying to lose weight and it is a very hard thing to change your character, to change your eating habits. Unless we do that, we are going to grow a lot of Americans who aren't going to be very healthy because they don't know their farmer and they don't know their food. And if you strike this ability for the department to go out and do that kind of outreach, we are going to have a less healthy America. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chair, Pigford v. Glickman was a class action discrimination suit between the USDA and black farmers. The suit was filed by an estimated 2,000 black farmers who said that USDA discriminated against them in loan programs. A settlement agreement was approved in 1999. The suit claimed that USDA discriminated against black farmers on the basis of race and failed to investigate or properly respond to complaints from 1983 to 1997. The deadline for submitting a claim was September 12, 2000. However, a large number of applicants filed late and reported deficiencies in representation by class counsel. Consequently, the 2008 farm bill (PL 110-246) permitted any claimant who had submitted a late-filing request under Pigford and who hadn't previously obtained a determination on the merits of their claim should obtain a determination. A maximum of $100 million in mandatory spending was made available for payments of these claims in the 2008 farm bill. The multiple claims that were subsequently filed by over 25,000 black farmers were consolidated into a single case, In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation (commonly referred to as Pigford II). On February 18, 2010, Attorney General Holder and Secretary Vilsack announced a $1.25 billion settlement of these Pigford II claims. The Pigford II settlement provides both a fast-track settlement process and high payments to potential claimants who go through a more rigorous review and documentation process. Potential claimants can seek the fast-track payments of up to $50,000 plus debt relief, or choose the longer process damages of up to $250,000. Finally, our Nation's black farmers who were discriminatecl against by their own government have received some modicum of justice. Despite years of political gamesmanship that prevented us from finding a fair resolution, thousands of families who have waited for the settlements will now receive them. We cannot deny them this basic justice.

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

Mr. FARR. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. FARR. That's not in the amendment that we have.

Mr. FARR. I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FARR. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. FARR. Yes.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I have concerns about where the money comes from as all these bills are offsetting, but I think that the purpose here should be funded. We have this whole initiative--and some of it has been attacked tonight-- about trying to get healthy foods grown by American farmers to people in areas that are called food deserts, as the gentlelady from Texas pointed out. There are places that people just can't go. There isn't a grocery store. There aren't fresh fruits and vegetables. I mean, think of the 7-Eleven. That's the kind of convenience stores that are around. Even the one we use up here a couple of blocks away is very limited in the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables it has. So what this initiative is all about, and it's the President's initiative too, is trying to get food--it's an educational process. I think the hardest cultural--this is what I learned from living in other cultures in the Peace Corps. The hardest thing to do is to get people to change their eating habits. We all know that struggle when we go on a diet. So it takes a lot of education. It takes a lot of support, but it also takes the need to have access to it. You need to have access to the fresh fruits and vegetables, and they can either come to you in a farmers market or you can go to them. But if you have neither a farmers market and there's nothing to go to, you have no option. And that's what this amendment is about, getting some money into the program that will be able to outreach and getting good, nutritious food to families who most need it who, without that, have a good chance of not growing up healthy, high incidence of obesity, high incidence of diabetes, high-risk issues that cost a lot of money for the taxpayers when they have to go on dialysis or have to be under treatment. So we have spent many years here in the committee--and the chairman knows it very well--of looking at how do we prevent this from happening when the choices are there. These are preventable diseases and preventable ill health situations, but we've got to reach out and do it, and that's what this amendment does and I think it deserves support.

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

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. It's very interesting that your colleague from Arizona (Mr. Gosar) just a minute ago was trying to add money to this account because of the catastrophe in rural America. This Rural Housing Assistance Grants Program is primarily to repair very low-income rural housing. This account was increased from the request of the President by the committee. The effect of this amendment would be to knock it back, and the reason the committee increased it was because of the need out there. We know what kind of a housing crisis we're having in America, particularly when people have no other place to go. This allows the lowest of income people in the poorest areas in the country, in rural America, to have some assistance to upgrade their houses so that the cost of high utility bills can be brought down with weatherization upgrades and things like that. I mean, this is not a smart cut. This will be hurting the people who can least afford it and at a time when they most need it, and I would oppose this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FARR. I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. FARR. I appreciate my good friend from Oregon's (Mr. Blumenauer) sentiments. And as ranking member of the House Ag Appropriations Subcommittee, I am a strong supporter of these conservation programs used both in Oregon and in my State of California. And I am distressed by the proposed cuts to these programs. I would like to point out that the Farm Bureau also opposes large cuts to the important working lands program and the Environment Quality Incentives Program. I find it especially disappointing that these funding levels are low enough that the USDA will have to break current contracts. That is an unfair result for our farmers and ranchers who have counted on the support and technical assistance for the year ahead. The funding levels for the 2008 farm bill were carefully negotiated, and it is frustrating to me and to many others to see the mandatory funding for conservation programs decrease so drastically because this bill was given such a low allocation.

Mr. FARR. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FARR. You just drive your own private car?

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on this amendment.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, again, how many times do they have to keep attacking the WIC account, women, infant and children? America has long decided that we ought to be taking care of the most vulnerable people in America. There are women who are pregnant, low- income, and what we've found is if you don't invest in teaching them how to have proper nutrition during their pregnancy, you have a risk of having a low-weight baby. A low-weight baby, as Dr. McDermott told us yesterday on the floor, can cost up to a quarter of a million dollars in incubation and hospital costs, and this is preventable with good nutrition. We go on to teach women, once that baby is born, how to breast-feed that child. We know that is good health practices. And then we keep the children with nutrition in the first 5 years. That's why it's called women, infant and children; it's about pregnancy, birth and raising that child. And this amendment wants to take $82 million out of that program which instructs women how to do proper breast-feeding and works with the States to do educational programs. We spent 3 hours last night debating the consequences of these cuts. And it's one of those penny-wise, super-pound foolish. It's also one of those where you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. There is a lot of value in keeping women well nourished during pregnancy and certainly keeping that newborn child well fed and nourished. To strike money from this program is ill founded, and I strongly oppose the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FARR. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. FARR. I rise in opposition to the amendment. I just want to make one short comment. What happens in this program is that we contract with countries to create these incentives to get kids to go to school. And you have heard the incredible stories that the gentleman from Massachusetts, Congressman Jim McGovern, just gave us on his experiences in visiting these countries. It's not only that these contracts are made with countries so they have to put something into it, but they also have a way of working themselves out. So it's not one of those, going back to Congressman Broun's comment earlier about Nannygate--this is a ``work yourself out of a program.'' You can get off the program by having it work. And then you can move the moneys to another country. So I think it's an outstanding program and worth keeping and certainly this cut would ruin it all. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I was going to introduce an amendment, but I just want to make a statement and I'll withhold the amendment. The statement I want to make is about what this underlying bill does to FDA. It cuts FDA, Federal Drug Administration, by 21 percent, about $580 million. On top of that, the FDA has to absorb another $37 million in higher rent costs. So we're really talking about a reduction to FDA of about $600 million. And yet we keep the law in place so they have to continue all the current requirements and activities that are mandated to them. This kind of cut means that 2,000 fewer domestic and foreign inspections of firms that manufacture food and medical products can be made. This kind of cut means that more than 9,000 fewer FDA import inspections to verify that imported food and medical products meet safety standards. This kind of cut means there will be 4,000 fewer food and medical product samplings to identify safety problems. The amendment that I was going to introduce would have moved some funds from the Commissioner's Office to the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, or known as CDRH. The Center for Devices and Radiological Health is responsible for bringing new technologies to market, and to make the medical devices that are already on the market safer and more effective. The FDA has implemented a more streamlined process by which medical devices can get to market called the Innovation Pathway. But with the cuts to the FDA budget in this bill, the Innovation Pathway will become Innovation Roadblock. At a hearing at the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health on February 17, 2011, the Director of CDRH, Dr. Jeffery Shuren, testified that these cuts: ``The Innovation Pathway would be a non-option. And for the rest of what we do, this would result in increased delays in decisions. It would deny patients truly safe and effective innovative technologies. And it will result in jobs being lost.'' So moving funds, even nominal funds, to CDRH makes a point that we would have to maintain a commitment to getting critical medical devices to market and to patients. The other point I wanted to make is the Center for Devices and Radiological Health is also responsible in part for the FDA advances in medical countermeasures. This medical countermeasures program extends across several FDA offices. The program coordinates the appropriate responses to national medical catastrophes. For CDRH, that means putting in place the right medical responses to radiological threats, threats like a dirty bomb, a rogue nuclear device, or even a natural disaster like the one that occurred in Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami. This isn't just a health concern. It's a homeland security concern. Unless we are ready to handle these emergencies, many, many people could die or be permanently disabled. We have to prepare. The CDRH can do that for us, but not with a budget cut like the one the FDA is facing. The 21 percent cut in the FDA budget means the public health of Americans is put at risk, is put on hold. Medical safety devices are put on hold. Medical countermeasures are put on hold. Radiological treatment improvements, like new forms of x rays, PET scans and MRIs are put on hold. I say it again, the 21 percent cut in the FDA budget is not good for America's health. I wish that we didn't have to adopt a budget with that kind of a cut. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.