Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just wanted to rise in support of this important amendment and to say that we would certainly want to encourage the Department of Agriculture to do as good a job as possible on linking many of the rural events around the country, many of our special fairs, rural shows, whether it is equipment, whether it is planting or whatever it might be. This is an incredible display of American innovation and creativity. I just really want to compliment the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) for seeing this opportunity which can benefit Vermont, an incredible State. I am so happy to have traveled there myself, just the sheer beauty of it would be of interest to our own people and people from abroad, but all of the counties and townships and communities across the country that are bringing forth their wares and their culture and to make this more open and available to people who are touring. I just think the gentleman has an excellent idea and support this amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I would also like to mention that one of the cuts in here relates to the repairs to the South Building along Independence Avenue here, the Agricultural Building, $26 million, a building whose heating and cooling systems dates back to the 1930s, the first major repair as we get ready for the 21st century. We have been waiting and waiting and waiting. This measure actually completely eliminates any construction, real improvements that could occur in that building, one of the relics around this city. So, Mr. Chairman, I would have to say I know the gentleman is struggling. For those of us on this subcommittee who have worked very hard for many months on this bill, this is an important moment for us. So I would say to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), I strongly oppose the gentleman in his efforts to remove an additional $102 million from the accounts for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, at a time when America is asking us to do more in these areas, and particularly now when rural America is in crisis. This is absolutely not the place to make these cuts. I would encourage the gentleman to go back and look at some of the other accounts, and would strongly urge the membership to vote no on this Young amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, we had heard on this side that this amendment might be coming, and I want to say to the chairman of our full committee, there is no Member that I would respect more in this House than the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). I believe he is a man of integrity who would want to do what is right for America, and especially for rural America, as troubled as she is right now. We have had an opportunity to review this amendment just for a few moments, and I would have to say overall to the membership that what this amendment does is it cuts an additional $102 million of the funds that are available to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to meet the needs of rural America. Now, let me say that I oppose the gentleman's amendment, and I strongly oppose it. I am sorry that I have to do that, because the chairman of the subcommittee and I came out of subcommittee in hopes we could have the kind of bipartisan unity that has always characterized this bill when it reaches the floor. But I think that I have to oppose the bill today for many reasons. One of them is that, overall, if you look at the amount of funds that we will spend in our country today to serve the needs of rural America, we are about 33 percent under for the Year 2000 what we will spend this year just to prevent the hemorrhages that are going on from coast to coast, whether it is cattle country in Florida, whether we are talking about grain producers in the Midwest, whether we are talking about cotton ranchers down in Texas or whether we are talking about the Salinas Valley in California. We are talking about a situation that just does not need Band-Aids, but serious repair. When we brought this bill for the Year 2000 to the floor, as uncomfortable as we were, we felt that, well, okay, so it is a big Band-Aid to get us through, but we know later in the year we are going to have to do more. Now for us to accept an additional $102 million in cuts is beyond what we feel is the right thing to do for America. This may be, with all due respect to the majority in this House, the right way to get you out of a political box among various warring factions inside the Republican Caucus, but it is not the right thing to do for America. For example, one of the major areas you cut is under the Agricultural Research Service. I do not know how many of you have ever been out in these Agricultural Research Service buildings. These are not fancy places. I mean, this is where the structures of the building kind of get rusty. These do not look like America's defense facilities or America's NASA facilities. Yet, in fact this is where the future of America is being reborn every day because of the general use of research that goes on. Yet in this cut, what do we do? We are cutting the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center by over $13 million. It affects the State of Maryland. For New York, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. In Pennsylvania, the Eastern Regional Research Center. In California, both in Albany and in Davis, their research labs. In Illinois, and this one really surprised me, in Peoria, the National Center for the Agricultural Utilization Research Service. Now, that is only one of the many cuts in this bill. There is an additional $10 million in research that is cut from the Cooperative Research Service and our extension programs. When we cut that additional $10 million, that adds to the $3 million that was already cut below last year, so it is a net negative of $13 million in those cooperative research accounts below this year. Research really is the seed corn of the future, and, with what is going on in rural America today, we need every single dime of that research working to invent the new technologies for the future that can help us preserve our food and fiber and fuel production inside the boundaries of this country. We are very troubled by the additional $20 million cut proposed in this amendment in the Food and Drug Administration. Here we are talking about the inspection service for food safety. We all know what is going on across this country with added needs for food safety. We have had plenty of outbreaks, in everything from cyclosporin to E. coli, everything that has affected citizens across this country. We do not need to cut the salaries and expenses account for the Food and Drug Administration. I heard ad nauseam in our subcommittee about the need to approve different devices and prescription drugs, that FDA was not moving fast enough, we needed to do more. America was not moving fast enough to meet the commercial marketplace. We had to do more for FDA. Well, this budget does less for FDA.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment and am somewhat surprised that a Member from Ohio, where agriculture is our leading industry, would offer this particular amendment. If one reads the changes that have been made in this program, particularly targeting its benefits at small- and medium-sized operations, I think some of what the gentleman has said might have been true many years ago, but they are certainly not true today. If one looks at what is happening in rural America, which is swimming in surpluses, and we know that for this country to help rural America make it we must expand our exports in spite of collapses in the Asian economy and other places, there is one program we do not want to cut at all and it is this program. I think what is really hard sometimes for Members who represent only urban or suburban areas, where production does not occur, where people largely reside but perhaps where agricultural development does not happen on an everyday basis, it is hard to understand how a farmer, who may raise beans or may raise animals and who wish to export a product, many times those same farmers cannot even sell in Cincinnati. A farmer over in Butler County, the only way they can get product into the City of Cincinnati is to perhaps sell at their farmers' market. They cannot even get their products on the shelves of the stores in Cincinnati. Imagine how difficult it is for that same farmer to move product into Japan or any other part of Asia or Latin America or Europe. This market access program is the only mechanism we have to help growers move product abroad. This is not Procter & Gamble. This is not where we can take production and move it anyplace in the world and then distribute the product. This is not U.S. Shoe, where all of their products are made abroad and then imported into Cincinnati and distributed to the rest of the United States. This is trying to help our producers in this country to be able to lift product off our market and take it somewhere else. And, Mr. Chairman, I underline ``producers.'' This is really a very, very important program. And if my colleagues know the trade accounts of this Nation, where every year we are going into more and more serious trade deficit, every single year more imports coming in here than exports going out, the one rosy light in a very bleak set of tables is agriculture. And the light is not getting brighter; it is getting dimmer as the years go on, but it is still lit up. And the reason is because we have been able to move product elsewhere around the world. So I would just say to the gentleman, in a State where our leading industry is agriculture, in a Nation where the agricultural accounts represent the only positive side of the trade ledger, this is exactly the program we do not want to cut. And we do not want to cut it particularly at a time when rural America is in deep depressions. This is a time to help our people, not to penalize them, and especially to meet the subsidized kind of programs that our trade competitors have on the books all across the world. Stand up for American agriculture when she is calling us and asking us to hear her voice.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to inform the House that we are going to proceed forward on this bill today. It is our hope, in view of the crisis in rural America, we can move through it expeditiously. We look forward to working with the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen) and to try to move through the amendments that remain. I think further delay is not in the interest of the Nation. We would like to move this bill to conference as quickly as possible. We look forward to proceeding with the amendments in order. I look forward to the first amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I wish to state that, as I listened to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and his desire to try to protect life, I think that his amendment and the words of his amendment, in fact, do not do that. So there is not a disagreement with the objective, but rather the means to get there. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, let me say to the gentleman from Oklahoma, I take it, then, he does not wish to support the Oklahoma State University's request for these ongoing research projects. I think that the gentleman's representative from the Committee on Appropriations should know that from the State of Oklahoma. I hope that the people from the University of Oklahoma also would know that.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, Ohio, my own State, is a very large forested State, and though this particular proposal for wood utilization research does not impact us directly, I think indirectly it impacts us as well as every other State in the Union, and I thought I would read some of the accomplishments of the research that has been done under this program. Truly, one of the issues we face as a country is a need to provide wood product as well as fibrous product for various building needs and industrial needs, and yet those hardwoods that we used to have are really becoming extinct. In fact, we even have other committees here that deal with ancient forests, trying to save some of the last trees that we have in certain stands, and yet we still have to continue building homes, we have to replace what used to be wood with other products. I am sure if Members have seen some of the new homes being built around the country, they even use these laminated products where they take wood chips and put glues in it in order to create the fiberboard that is used. In some places we are growing sugar cane and other types of cane products and figuring out how to take the moisture out of them and laminate them and use them for wood construction, or what looks like wood but really is not. The new knowledge that is gained through this research program has been conducted through six centers around our country. Let me just read some of the new types of products that they have been able to bring to market. The design of glued laminated beams that are reinforced with plastics saves up to 25 to 40 percent of the wood fiber that would otherwise have to be used in that construction. So even our forests, and our privately-owned forests are not growing fast enough to meet the needs that we have domestically and internationally. In addition to this, they have been working on technology to apply those wood preservatives, using superfluids to reduce the environmental problems associated with present commercial treatments. When they put on these laminates and these various glues, this is a very difficult industrial process and they have been working on that. They have been working at better harvesting systems that are efficient and environmentally acceptable. Easy to say, hard to do. They have been looking at the increase of wood machining speeds and the reduction of saw blade widths to increase productivity and save raw material itself. The world of the 21st century and the new millennium will be one of shrinking natural resources and trying to use what we have in wiser ways. They have been working on a patented system to apply pressure and vibration to prevent the enzymatic sap stain which degrades hardwood lumber by $70 to $200 million a year. I know that because I have a little coffee table in my house, and I cannot get that sap to stop staining up through the covering that is on it. We need to find scientific answers to that so that wood can be fully utilized. They have been doing research on the reduction of the quantity of wood bleaching chemicals needed by wood pulp producers. In other words, to try to be more environmentally conscious. They have been working on the design and strength of wood furniture frames to minimize wood requirements. The wood being used today in furniture, if we were to take everything apart that used to use wood, we would be surprised at how that has been minimized. In States like Michigan, States like Ohio, where many industries use this new research, it has been immediately adapted. Also, they have been using the adoption of European frame saw technology to composite lumber to provide a new raw material source for industry. It is very interesting to look at some of the layered wood products that have been used across our country. Some of the glues did not work originally. Now they are doing much better at that, where we are using just the top coating is actual wood and what is underneath is various types of composite products. So I would say that this is extremely important. We are one of the largest forested nations in the world. We are having trouble with many of our softwoods, bringing them to market. People do not just want to live on plastic, they do like the feel and look of wood, and many of these wood utilization scientific studies and undertakings do have a direct commercial market application. So I just wanted to put that on the record, and I would support the chairman in his opposition to this amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. I do not know what the White House has to do with this. The budget process is for us, the Budget Committee of the House, the Budget Committee of the other body. We do our budget, we get our allocations. What I do not understand, nobody has been able to explain to me in 2 days, if you do not agree with the budget allocations that have been given, why do you not go back and do the budget? The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), they were out here yesterday, they voted with the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) on the amendments that he brought up. And I am standing here thinking, ``Wait a minute, they gave us the budget marks that we used in our committee, so now why are they voting against their own marks?'' I do not understand. What is not working? Which committee is not working over there? The Budget Committee? They already did the work. They gave us the marks. How do we avoid what is going on here? Does the gentleman understand my question?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, within the gentleman's structure, he decided what those levels were. Now he is saying he does not agree. On this side of the aisle we have to act in good faith with the budget the gentleman's party has given us. I am saying to my colleague, if he does not like what he was given, other than coming down here and doing this, does he not have some other amending process he can do on his side, inside his caucus, to produce the budget that he wants?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Indiana for yielding. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman made a reference to the point this it is not this subcommittee's fault, because there are unrealistic allocation numbers given through the budget process to each of the committees. Could the gentleman tell me who produced those numbers, then, that he is objecting to?

Ms. KAPTUR. But they prepared the budget. It is their budget.

Ms. KAPTUR. Well, which party are they in? Is it the majority party? Mr. Chairman, I would like the record to show it is the majority party that prepares the budget.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment and just wish to say that the accumulation of amendments over the last 2 days, and I agree with my good friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky), ultimately results in a negative message to agricultural America and questioning whether or not we have made the right decisions. Any Member has a right to question what any committee has done inside this Congress. However, one after another, after another, it is like, drip, drip, drip, in a situation today where rural America is in depression. The gentleman from Virginia made a good point. People are not getting 95 cents on a dollar. Farmers raising hogs in America today, it costs them 40 cents to break even, and last December they made 9 cents, and last March they made 28 cents; yet we go to buy chops in the store and they are going to run us $2.26 to $4 a pound and more. Who is making the money off that? We end up with an agricultural system in this country where the person at the bottom of the totem poll, the producer, the farmer, his or her access to market is controlled, if they are trying to sell pork, by six companies; if they are trying to sell beef, it is three companies; if they are trying to get something on the shelves of a supermarket today, they have to pay a slotting fee of $20,000 or $50,000. I ask my colleagues, why when we go down a supermarket aisle and we look at the names of the soda pop on the shelves, why do only certain names reach us right in the eye? If there are local producers, why can they not get on those shelves? It is an interesting system. And why would America be in a condition today where imports are coming in here faster than exports going out? In fact, 25 percent of the market in this country in agricultural products now is comprised of imported goods. Why would that be, in the most productive Nation in the world? It is because we have not paid enough attention to those who are actually doing the work of producing. All of the weight has gone to the processing and the distribution ends of the equation, but we have not paid attention to those who are really still struggling down on the farm and losing equity every day. It does not matter whether we are talking about upland cotton or rice or hogs or wheat or oats or cattle or poultry. It really does not matter today because every single sector is hemorrhaging. Farmers are losing equity. Farm values have started to drop. Prices, probably this year they expect to be 27 percent below last year, and here we are nitpicking a bill that has come in within budget, within the allocation that we were given. So I would just say to my colleagues, please, let us get back to the business of doing the work of this Congress, and particularly for that sector in America which is hemorrhaging today, which is rural America. Let us move this bill. I understand today we are going to pull the bill and perhaps deal with it later. Further delay, adding to the delay that has contributed to all of the difficulties in rural America today, when the Department of Agriculture cannot get the paperwork properly processed because the supplemental came in so late last year, and the supplemental this year that was just passed came in months late and agriculture got tied up in that, unfortunately. Let us deal with this bill with dispatch. If there is a budget problem, get rid of it. Deal with it in some other way, but do not make the farmers in America pay any heavier price than they have already paid. The average age of farmers in this country today is 55 and rising. The gentleman from Virginia was right, every young person who is still thinking about farming is saying, is that really worth my time? So today I rise in opposition to this Coburn amendment. It is just one of many being offered to delay this bill. Why this is in the strategy of the leadership of this Congress to delay this bill is beyond me. They have to power to fix everything. Let them go do it, and let the farmers of America have their presence felt here in this House. I ask the membership to vote ``no'' on the Coburn amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to engage in a colloquy with the chairman of the full Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) regarding the anticipated schedule on the agriculture appropriations bill. We understand that on our side there are few amendments that remain to be offered, but it is unclear to us what the desire of the majority is in moving this piece of legislation. If the gentleman could clarify for our side, we would greatly appreciate it.

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the chairman for that clarification. I notice that the majority leader is on the floor and able to engage in this colloquy. I wonder if he would do me the great honor of giving those of us on our side his view of what the schedule for the remaining part of the day will be like and how the agricultural appropriations bill will fit into the schedule later today.

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman will let us know perhaps by 5:30 whether or not the agricultural appropriations bill will be coming to the floor later this evening so our Members could be ready?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. I would just advise our membership that if we do have Members listening or on the floor who have amendments, call our office no later than 6 o'clock and we will try to let our Members know whether there will be additional votes this evening or not on the agricultural appropriations bill. I would just ask the forbearance of the leadership of the majority to please treat our Members with respect, and I am sure they will, but to allow us the time necessary to prepare our Members for the floor. If we are not going to bring the bill up tonight, if we do not hear by 6 o'clock, I will assume it will not be coming up.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the leader.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I guess, as one ranking member on one of the 13 subcommittees, we did our work and we produced a bill under the mark we were given. As my colleague can imagine, we feel somewhat troubled by the fact that we have been dragged out to the floor here, now 2 days, with every line item picked apart when, in fact, we produced a bill under the rules we were told to play by. And I guess we do not really understand why this is being fought out on the House floor. Mr. Chairman, is this their only measure to bring it to us? Can my colleagues not do it in their own caucus?