Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's objective of trying to deal with the budget is a worthy objective. Can I ask the gentleman, since he is in the majority party and we, as the appropriators, and I particularly in the minority, have had to abide by the budget caps they gave us, and we have done that on this Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, why do my colleagues not go back and redo the budget rather than put our subcommittees through this agony on the floor? I am missing something here.

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, in terms of how the Members of our side of the aisle functioned, we accepted the budget numbers that were given us and we acted in good faith on our subcommittee. We have produced a bill that meets the budget mark that we were given. So, therefore, to rip apart the bill because maybe my colleagues do not like some provision in the bill, they want to do something else with it, well, I think most Members come to the floor but they do not come with 150 or 200 amendments. We operated in good faith here. I will tell my colleagues it is a little hard to maintain it as the hours go on here today, but the point is, if my colleagues do not like the budget, go back and redo the budget. Do not pick apart every appropriation bill that comes to the floor. We have lived within our budget. Let our committee function. Frankly, my colleagues really risk great damage to this Republic, because we could end up where we were last year when the majority here rammed that big bill through here at the end of the year because we could not complete our appropriation bills on time and on schedule. Here we are here in the Committee on Agriculture, because of the crisis in rural America, on time with our bill, within the allocation we are given; and now my colleagues are holding us up again. I fear that the very same mess that was created last year is going to repeat itself this year. So if my colleagues have a problem with the allocation, go back to their budgeteers; work the problem out there. But when we have subcommittees acting in good faith and doing their job, do not disenfranchise them. I think that is the height of my colleagues' responsibility inside the Chamber.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. First of all, let me say that if the offerors of the amendment want efficiency, then surely the bill that our subcommittee has brought to the floor is efficient. In fact, the author of the amendment stated in his last comments on the floor that we were in fact within the budget allocation. So we have a very efficient bill, without question. Now, this particular amendment is one that goes after one particular function at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the proponents claim that it is efficient. Let me say that overall, our bill is efficient. But in making decisions in the public realm, one has to not only be efficient, one has to be equitable, and I would oppose the gentleman's amendment on the basis that it is not equitable. Why? What are these funds dedicated to? They are dedicated to redressing wrongs inside USDA and an inability, because of discrimination in past years, for that department to deal with all of America, all of America's farmers, regardless of color, regardless of creed, regardless of sex, whatever. The funding that is provided, and even the Wall Street Journal has done front page stories on this, my colleagues do not have to listen to this Member, they just need to call it up on their web site, is to redress past wrongs. The inability of this department in past years to serve all of America's farmers, to make sure that the credit programs were open to all farmers, to make sure that when people worked hard, just because they might have had low equity did not mean that their work did not have a value, and that in fact they perhaps should not have been ignored for decades and in fact perhaps for a century and a half. And so I would say to those who offer this amendment, I would hope they would withdraw this. I think to try to cut funds, for example, for the Office of Outreach, and again our bill is within the budget allocation, means that they will continue the historic discrimination that has characterized so much of the behavior of our Government and our people in this century and the last. This is the first time we have had a chance to do what is both efficient and equitable. And I would ask my colleagues and those who are offering this amendment to really seriously consider what they are about to do. I really do not think they want to do this. I think they want to do what is right for America, right for all of its people, and right for the future. I would encourage my colleagues to vote a strong ``no'' on this Coburn amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Oklahoma, and I just wish to state for the record that the Food and Nutrition Service, which is in another account, was conducting some of its own evaluations for a number of years, and the committee felt that a more objective set of evaluations could be done through the Economic Research Service. That is the reason that these funds are in this account, because essentially we have transferred responsibilities from the Food and Nutrition Service to the Economic Research Service. This is a new function, in a sense, for the Economic Research Service, but we believe with their objectivity they could do a good job of evaluating the two-thirds to three-quarters, actually three-quarters of this budget that is in the mandatory programs, including our major food and nutrition programs. So I think the gentleman expressed some concern that there were funds in here providing for research, but the point is they are not being provided in the Food and Nutrition Service any more. These responsibilities have been shifted to the Economic Research Service. So I wanted to state that for the record and to state that we hope that the Economic Research Service will do their job well. We certainly have had waste, fraud and abuse in many of the food and nutrition programs, and we have been going after that through the Inspector General, I think who is doing a tremendous job at USDA in particular, and I would hope that the evaluations that would be done would continue to show progress. So I would not support the gentleman's amendment because I think it is a rather arbitrary and ill-advised cut.

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

Ms. KAPTUR. For the Economic Research Service, yes.

Ms. KAPTUR. That is correct.

Ms. KAPTUR. The Food and Nutrition Service will no longer be doing its own evaluations; that is correct.

Ms. KAPTUR. The Food and Nutrition Service will no longer perform their own evaluative research; that is correct.

Ms. KAPTUR. They will not be doing research in this evaluative research. We changed it because we thought that perhaps they had too much of a vested interest in continuing programs the way they were, and the monitoring might not have been as objective as it should have been. This may not work under ERS. We are not sure it will work, but we think it is a way of being more objective.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Sanders amendment, and this may be the only disagreement that the chairman of the subcommittee and I have on this bill. I compliment the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) for bringing this amendment to us to get the full body's view on this when we vote very shortly, and I support the amendment for several reasons. One is, around this country, the feeding kitchens of America are empty. We have an enormous need for additional food. Just the last two weekends ago the letter carriers across our country did a food drive and tried to replenish the supplies in these food banks, because this is not close to Christmas and they have been drawn down, and with all of the changes that have been made in welfare reform, for example, we do have lots of people who are hungry in America tonight, most of them women and children. So I would say that there is great merit in the gentleman's proposal. In addition to that, in this bill, we were unable to fund so many worthy programs that would bring food to people, including the Senior Nutrition Program where there had been a proposal to provide a small subsidy so that seniors would not have to pay so much for lunches when they go into some of their lunch programs. We were not able to include that in this bill. Finally, I will support in this bill and in any subsequent bills any effort that would lift commodities off this market in order to try to help get prices up for our farmers. This bill itself, in the body of this bill, we were not able to provide the kind of surplus commodity assistance that we would have hoped for. We have done some, but we just have not done enough. I would say to the author of the amendment, it is difficult for me to take money from the Agricultural Research Service. I would hope that as we move toward conference we might be able to find other ways to fund this very worthy proposal. I will vote for the gentleman's amendment when the time comes for all of the reasons that I have listed, but I would hope that we might be able to find other offsets, because truly we know that the future of American agriculture rests in research, and our bounty is directly related to the investments we make in so many crops.

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the gentleman if we have a copy of this amendment?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, but did the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies not abide by the caps that were given to us from the Committee on the Budget, the budget under the 302(b) allocation?

Ms. KAPTUR. Then, if I might just state for the Record, then the amendment is a frivolous amendment because it does not change the total amount of dollars in the account.

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I just wanted to ask, in the way of a parliamentary inquiry, when the gentleman intends to amend his amendment, does he intend to also amend the $166,364,000 figure in line 12 on page 5? Is that part of his amendment?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for reserving the right to object, and I wanted to state that to our knowledge, we have been given a minimum of 20 amendments by the Clerk. We have been told there are an additional 80 amendments that have been filed, and there may be more of which we are not aware. As the gentleman may know, we have been on the floor this afternoon having to consider amendments we have never seen. In fact, on this current amendment, it is unclear to us whether line 12 of page 5 is included in the amendment or not. So I would support the gentleman in his efforts to try to put some rational process in place here. I realize we are in the minority, but I think our Members have a right to be informed as to what is going on, because they are coming up to me, and I would prefer to have a more orderly process.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Salinas Valley, California (Mr. Farr), another member of our committee who represents the area that really feeds America, a hard working and dedicated member of our subcommittee.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I want to say to the chairman of our subcommittee, and to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton) that we so much support the efforts that he is making for this Niles Center, also on behalf of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer). We have that special situation where Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio all meet. And the services provided through the Center serve the entire country certainly, especially the Midwest. And I want to compliment the gentleman for drawing our attention to it and placing it in the debate today.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), a distinguished member of the subcommittee who has put in long hours on this bill.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey). (Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)