Sam Farr

Mr. FARR

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

Mr. FARR. This amendment doesn't save one penny. Ironically, we just returned from the White House summer congressional picnic, and people ate food there. At every table, it listed where the food came from. Indeed, I remember because I went to the ice cream place and there was a stack of honey that came from the White House, that has a White House label on it, and it's a gift that the First Lady gives to visiting dignitaries from around the world as a sample of American honey grown at the White House. We just experienced Know Your Farmer--Know Your Food not more than an hour ago. This amendment does nothing but be mean.

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

Mr. FARR. Could you tell me where in the bill this has anything to do with what you're talking about?

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

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

Mr. FARR

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

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.

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. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, in finishing, I would just like to say, there is some inconsistency and insincerity here in stating what you did as a profession and then cutting these programs, because these go to the children that we think the medical profession so much appreciates trying to care for. I mean, if you can't feed children, if you can't feed women, and you can't feed infants, no matter where in the world they are, problems are going to occur. Big, serious problems. That is not fiscal conservative. That is just not very intelligent.

Mr. FARR. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. FARR. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to point out that you used the term ``nanny state.'' Since we're government, I don't think anybody wants to be responsible for everybody, to be responsible to raise the whole society; but I do think that this help that you give people from the Federal Government and from local and State governments is absolutely essential. When you don't have that infrastructure of social services and needs there, I'll tell you what happens--people still have those problems. Only they don't have a place to go get them. So do you know what they do? They knock on your door. In America, we don't have to open our door day after day, with somebody holding a baby, as I saw in the Peace Corps. There were people all the time with dead babies, infants. There were people who were begging for money to bury them properly or there were people asking you for extra food after you finished your meal. They know what time you eat, and ask, Can you give your leftovers to us? We don't have that in America because we have an infrastructure that takes care of people. I think, if you totally wipe that out and say, well, leave it to charity, charity is just voluntary. It doesn't always work. When the markets crash, the charity isn't there. Poverty is still there. The need is still there. You saw it as a doctor, and you know you've serviced people who couldn't pay their bills; but you do have Medicare reimbursements and other kinds of Medicare reimbursements so that you can, even if they can't pay their bills, get some form of payment. If it were all left up to voluntary, the doctors would have to serve people who just have no money. I don't think all the poor people in America would be taken care of. So we do have to concern ourselves with how much care and spending we do, but at the same time, don't wipe out the programs that are essentially the life support systems of a society that is as rich as America. We can afford to take care of the people most vulnerable, whether they are aging or infants, and I think a lot of the discussion here has been about trying to delete the programs that help people at their most vulnerable stages of life.

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

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

Mr. FARR. I think the amendment is well intended. I think the author is well intended. Rural America is hurting. Rural America is really under a depression. We have not done a very good job of having a rural strategy for America. I applaud Secretary Vilsack for trying to pull together programs to invest in rural America and make sure that the different agencies in the Federal Government are working in collaboration. And I think this amendment addresses some of those issues, not in a collaborative way but just in putting more money into rural America. But unfortunately, that good intent is offset by the evil done in taking it out of the foreign ag account. And I can't support the amendment for that.

Mr. FARR

Mr. FARR. Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished Member from California (Mr. Garamendi), former Lieutenant Governor of the State of California.

Mr. FARR. Madam Chair, I oppose this amendment. This is a big cut out of a very important program, just indicated by Congressman Clarke from Michigan. For all the reasons he was trying to increase the program, this amendment goes just the opposite way. It knocks 10 percent of the money that's in the program out. There will be no way that he can increase it with this and work out a deal. And for all the reasons he indicated on food safety and issues like that that are very, very important, we ought not risk the ability to respond to those needs. So I think this amendment does harm, and it does more harm than the good that it intends to do. That is the reason I oppose it, and would ask for a ``no'' vote. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FARR. Madam Chair, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. FARR. Madam Chair, how much time do both sides have remaining?

Mr. FARR. I yield myself as much time as I may consume. I rise today as the ranking member on the Agriculture appropriations subcommittee to draw concern to this bill. I know that we're in tough budget times, but even in tough budget times, people have to eat. It's my opinion that this bill makes it very hard for people to eat, particularly people who don't have any money. The allocation for the FY 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill, as approved in the full committee, is $17.250 billion. This is $5 billion, or 23 percent, below what President Obama asked for. It's 14 percent below what Congress enacted last year. It's 26 percent below what the Congress enacted the year before. It's even below what we enacted in 2008. So it has taken the wind out of the hopes and food lockers of people who are most poor. With the allocation that Chairman Kingston was given, I don't envy his position. He was forced to make these drastic cuts that will affect every heart of farm country, and I do appreciate the effort that he has made to invest our very limited resources wisely and cost effectively. In tough budget times, everyone has to tighten their belts; we all know that. I want to point out, though, that it doesn't matter if you're a specialty crop producer in California or a cotton or peanut producer in Georgia; if the resources are not available to deliver the program, then the effects felt by both producers and consumers in urban and rural areas are the same. I know my friend Mr. Kingston did the best he could but agriculture is about feeding people. This isn't just about looking at the cost of everything. It's also examining the value. It's about making sure that America has the production capabilities and enough food to go around domestically and internationally. The bill almost makes that difficult, if not impossible, especially where nursing mothers and infant babies are concerned, because the WIC program gets whacked. The bill also calls into question the United States' commitment to our international neighbors who have hungry and malnourished people that depend on our assistance to stave off mass starvation because the Food for Peace program is chopped. I think there comes a point in budget exercise when you starve the program so much that it just can't function. I fear that this is where this bill is going, with several of the funding levels in this bill, such as implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Dodd- Frank and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The United States is the greatest agriculture producer in the world. We produce more and we produce it more efficiently than any other country, but this bill will undermine the very resources that support our agricultural supremacy. I feel it is important to use this bill to strengthen our rural economy by investing our precious Federal resources, investing in expanding markets for agricultural products and supporting international economic development; by investing in developing alternative markets for agriculture products; by providing financing needed to help expand job opportunities and improve housing, utilities, and infrastructure in rural America, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture is responsible for; and most specifically, enhancing food safety and improving nutrition and health by providing food assistance and nutrition education and promotion. These are the things that America does best. Madam Chairman, as we move through this bill, through the process again, I want to make sure that you understand that there are dire consequences to adopting this bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. FARR. Madam Chair, how much time does each side have remaining?