Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman and gentlewoman for working with us, and we look forward to having the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gillmor) with us very soon here in resolving this.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding to me and the gentlewoman from New York, because, in consultation with both of them, we substantially scaled back our original amendment. This particular amendment, as modified, that we are offering this evening would only take the clearinghouse section out of the original proposal to collect information from the lobbying disclosure.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, for purposes of the Record, this would be the original amendment listed as 39. I will not be officially offering it this evening. It has to do with the constitutional amendment to overturn Buckley versus Valeo, which I think is the real answer to these questions. But we will be moving on to Amendment 39.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to modify the amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute in the form at the desk.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, historically, Congress has been very clear about disallowing foreign contributions to U.S. campaigns at every level, and if we look, however, at the foreign lobbying activities that have grown, especially in this past quarter century, and the organization of multinational corporations that have in many ways outgrown existing law, it is clear that an amendment like this is needed and, as originally proposed, my amendment sought to both clarify the definition as well as the disclosure by foreign-controlled political action contributions to U.S. election campaigns. But I am going to offer a modified version of this after considerable consultation with the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gillmor) and others on the other side of the aisle and this one. But it is certainly true to say that U.S. law has been abundantly clear about who can contribute to U.S. campaigns: citizens of this country as individuals and citizens through political action committees expressly organized for that purpose. But corporations cannot contribute directly, nor can trade unions outside of a formally recognized political action committee. But because of a loophole dating back to 1934, while foreign nationals and foreign citizens cannot directly or indirectly contribute to U.S. elections, foreign-controlled corporations and trade associations, including those based in the United States, can contribute. The Federal Election Campaign Act, section 441(e) says, and I quote, A foreign national shall not directly or through any other person make a contribution or expressly or implicitly promise to make a contribution in connection with an election to any political office or in connection with any primary election, convention, or caucus held to select candidates for any political office or for any person to solicit, accept, or receive any such contribution from a foreign national. The Federal Elections Act defines a foreign principal as a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party; a person outside the United States who is not a citizen; or a partnership, association, corporation, or organization, or other combination of persons organized under the laws of or having its principal base of business in a foreign country. The loophole in all of that is that foreign-owned corporations and trade associations which are organized under U.S. law and have their principal place of business in the United States are not classified as foreign principals and are, therefore, allowed to operate PACs, even though their control and ownership are foreign in nature. The principal law governing the disclosure of lobbying by these entities, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, when the GAO studied in 1990 what had been happening, it is that, in fact, disclosure of those activities are very thin. The GAO found that the lack of timeliness of the filing of reports required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act contributes to the failure to fulfill the Act's goal of providing the public with sufficient information on foreign agents and their activities in this country, including political activities. As modified, my amendment will not disallow contributions as I had hoped to do in a bill that I had filed earlier, because, frankly, there was opposition to doing that. But it does take the one section of our proposal that will allow us to at least collect the information that we need to understand the impact and the extent of these involvements. As presently constituted, my amendment would establish within the Federal Election Commission a clearinghouse on that of public information regarding the political activities of foreign principals or their agents. Currently, public information on these activities is collected by the government in scattered ways. But this information would be brought together in one place and provide the public and Congress a better idea of what is actually going on in regard to foreign lobbying and giving activity. No one will be required to provide any information that is not already collected but in several disparate places. Nor would anyone be required to provide duplicative information to a new agency. The responsibility for furnishing the data to the FEC would rest with the agency itself. The clearinghouse will only collect public information already compiled and will provide a comprehensive picture of what political activities are taking place by these foreign interests.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. Not at this point.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I rise with my colleagues at this very special moment to pay tribute to the dean of the Ohio delegation, always to me our good friend Congressman Louis Stokes. For myself personally, and I know for every single other member of the Ohio delegation, from our great buckeye State, when we came to Congress, Lou Stokes was here. He has always been here. For us as Members, for our State, to imagine Ohio without Lou Stokes is to imagine an Ohio with a piece of its heart missing. And this particular moment of tribute is one of those moments in Congress that each of us who has had the pleasure of working and knowing this man will not forget. Others have detailed the congressional service of our good friend, Lou Stokes, but perhaps it is important to remember that when he was elected to the Committee on Appropriations he was the first African- American ever to serve on this very, very important committee of cardinals rising to be a cardinal in his own right. I think as a woman having had to overcome some of the barriers in my own life, I can somewhat identify, but certainly not completely, with what that must have felt like. I think what has always amazed me about Lou Stokes is what a gentleman he has been. I think the kind of elegance with which he carries himself, the kind of elegance that causes his grandchildren to really smile at him with open eyes, is a quality that all of us truly admire and wish that we had ourselves. I think if we look at all of the programs over which he has had jurisdiction within the Committee on Appropriations itself, whether it was the National Institutes of Health and the types of studies that are done there to recognize the types of illnesses that afflict all segments of our population, or whether we are talking about who should go on to college and who has the opportunity to become all they can be, or if we are talking about in fact the history of the U.S. military and the complete renovation of sections of Arlington Cemetery, long before the movie glory ever came out, Lou Stokes was there. Certainly, the people of Cleveland have every right to be proud that two of their sons helped change the history of this country. Now, Lou and I share a great affection for our families, and particularly our mothers, and I guess my one regret in knowing Lou is I never got to know his mother and Carl's mother. Because what a mother she must have been to raise those two boys in the shadow of inner city Cleveland. He took us by the housing project one day when we were touring Cleveland on a brownfields tour, and to imagine that that household, that home would have brought this man to Congress at the time that he came, the time that he came. The wounds in America of race will not heal over in my lifetime, but I know that I have met someone who has helped heal those wounds for our country. As I have said in other venues and I will say here for the record, I think one of the memories that I will have of Lou that I never expected to have, came from one of our quiet subcommittee meetings one day in this particular committee, Veterans, HUD, NASA, NSF, EPA, when we were listening to the witnesses from Arlington Cemetery who were bringing in the books, the ledgers of those who had served our country and were buried in Arlington, and they brought in these dusty volumes. I remember opening them up, and I was sitting next to Chairman Stokes at that time, and he opened up to one of the pages and we began to read, and we looked in such-and-such a section and at this particular plot, at who was buried. And the ledger read, no name, no name, no name. Those who had fought in the Civil War who for all of history had remained unnamed simply because they were people of color. Through his efforts, in fact, that section of Arlington has now been restored and we have recently witnessed a major statue unveiling in this city and all kinds of national programs and so forth, but Lou Stokes was there at the head of the queue long before the rest of the country was. I know that we in Ohio who have a history of trying to remember the underground railroad know that through his efforts here as we begin to save that history and enshrine that history for all time, the 21st century will in fact be different from the 20th and the 19th, and so as just one buckeye and one member of this great Congress, I want to say to my good friend, Lou Stokes of Cleveland, thank you. Thank you on behalf of this Congress; thank you on behalf of the people of the State of Ohio that you have done proud here. Thank you on behalf of your mother and your brother for serving our country when you could have done so many other things with the gifts that life has given you. It has been an honor to serve with you. You have taught me much. You will always be the Congressman from the great City of Cleveland.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her tremendous international as well as national leadership on this issue. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 121 and, therefore, vote ``no'' on extending most-favored-nation to China. Why do I say so? Mainly because the policy is not working. It is one way. Most-favored nation is not normal. It is abnormal. It is preferential. How can you say, when China keeps 40 percent tariffs up against our goods, and we allow their goods to come in here at 2 percent, that kind of differential, how can that be normal? It is preferential. It is defective. It is not reciprocal. It is not normal. Why should we reward, therefore, a growing trade deficit to our country that results from that system? Over $50 billion now, a 350 percent increase during the last decade, knocking off a quarter point off our GDP. People say, well, what does that really matter? It matters because it erodes productive power inside this society as we cash out our middle class jobs and working class jobs across the Pacific. We have had to raise the minimum wage here. We have to save health benefits for our people. We have to try to somehow retain pension benefits at the level they existed in the past decades. And this begs the question of the other issues that should concern us on China-- nuclear weapons proliferation, the kind of religious and human rights abuses China is famous for, the brutality toward Tibet. If you look at agriculture, even in this so-called era where we are supposed to have a beachhead with China, we actually reached our little teeny weeny blip in exports in 1996 and have had a 23 percent decrease since that time. They keep their tariffs up on our soybean oil. They do not let in our citrus. They keep their state-run monopolies on fiber and wheat. What are we to do? In this post-Berlin Wall era, what is it that the United States stands for? Are we using our moral, political, and economic power to build democracy in developing nations of the world? Or are we, as Nelson Mandela reminded us during President Clinton's visit there in Africa, part of a web of forces that exploits ordinary people on behalf of repressive regimes and transnational corporations who hold a disdain for democratic principles themselves? I can tell which side of the question the passion in this debate is on. Vote ``yes'' on H.R. 121. Let us represent the voices of millions of people in this country and in China who feel they are held in bondage by those who fundamentally do not respect and will not tolerate the very idea of democracy for all.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to say one of the arguments that the Secretary of Treasury uses in the materials he sent to us today say, ``The administration and any President needs these dollars because of today's large, fast-moving financial markets.'' I want to say that that is exactly the reason that this Congress should have oversight; that because in fact so many powerful global financial interests have an impact on this marketplace, we in Congress have got to be in tandem with those movements. We cannot absent ourself from that process, and, in fact, we have to gain some leverage over these major financial decisions that end up being political decisions in the end, when we end up supporting certain financial interests in other places. The Secretary says, ``Treasury fully accepts its responsibility to account to Congress.'' I would say Congress ought to accept its responsibility to account to the American people. I urge the Members to support the Sanders-Bachus amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Sanders-Bachus-Miller- Stearns-Kaptur-Burton-DeFazio-Rohrabacher Kucinich-Paul-Stark-Owens amendment, and I do so for several reasons. First of all, the amendment restores proper Congressional constitutional prerogatives over the spending of U.S. taxpayer dollars. These are our people's dollars. We have a legitimate role here to play in the Congress. This is a eminently reasonable amendment, because it basically says the administration has latitude up to $250 million, not small change by anyone's measure, but when you go over that limit, then you have to come and seek approval by this Congress, simply because those dollars are then used in order to assist foreign governments, banks, investors, many who have no role in electing the Members here. There are serious issues that we may have with those who would benefit from this type of wealth exchanging hands. Let me mention that this particular fund, the Economic Stabilization Fund, was established by law in 1934, and its purpose, its legislative purpose as written by Congress, is to buy or sell currency in order to stabilize our dollar in current short-term crises. The fund was never meant to be used for medium-term loans or long-term loans or to prop up foreign governments, which is what it has been doing of late, to the magnitude that is currently being used just in the last couple of years, $20 billion, into the billions. It was never, ever intended for that purpose. We have back-doored our way into this practice. This amendment basically prohibits any administration from putting billions of taxpayer dollars at risk in loans to other countries without the explicit approval of this Congress. And we well know what has been going on, whether we are talking about Korea or Russia or Mexico. We are talking about speculative investment that has fueled export-led development in those nations that cannot be sustained over time. I think the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Vento) talked about the need for IMF reform. I completely agree, because we end up getting in these currency crises because the fundamental development policy is wrong. It is unsustainable internally in these countries, and it cannot be maintained. We fight always to get a vote here on declarations of war, and it has been hard for the legislative branch over the decades to maintain its prerogatives under the Constitution. But that is not to say we should not do it. The same is true with economic policy. Yes, we may have to fight for our day in the sun, but, under our Constitution, we have that constitutional responsibility. This amendment passed before in 1995 by a wide margin. Two hundred forty-five Members voted in favor of it. In fact, since that time it has not blocked any kind of assistance where it was essentially needed. So we are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I always wanted to say that it is very, very important that Members think about where these dollars go, and is it not as important for us to have oversight over billions of dollars that goes beyond our borders in the same way as we have oversight of millions that flow within these borders? We have GAO studies, and we have Congressional oversight committees, and we have all kinds of staff studies to take a look at where every single dollar goes in our health care financing programs and so forth, our food stamps, our defense spending. Why should we be any less rigorous when the money goes for foreign purposes? We have received letters from leaders in the Parliament, for example, in Mexico City, talking about the serious financial problems Mexico currently faces because of the fact that the fundamental development policy was never changed. But we end up trying to bail out the speculators that prop up the real estate market and make investments that are not creditworthy. We then end up using the ESF fund to try to prop up a house of cards that cannot stands on its own. In closing, I just want to read a couple lines from the letter that came from this particular Secretary of Treasury.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, it is with sadness yet also gratitude, that I enter in this Record the life of Mrs. Maxine Shore, an American of enormous talent and creativity whose 86 years of life contributed to the enrichment of America and our literary heritage. Her life of continuous learning and perseverance throughout holds an example for all who knew her, and all who will enjoy her writings for generations to come. Our deepest sympathies are extended to her son, Steven, her many friends, and associates. In Remembrance: A Bio of Maxine Shore Author and Teacher Maxine Shore, a prolific author and teacher, died June 2, 1998, at her home in Carmel, CA. She was 86. She received her B.A. from McAllister College in Minnesota, quickly moving into writing and publishing after college. Mrs. Shore, believed that everyone has inborn creativity which she encouraged in her students, who successfully published award winning books. At the time of her death she was still teaching classes and editing five books a month. One book, The Captive Princess which was authored by Shore was set in the first century in England and told the story about the first Christian princess of England. The book went into seven printings and was chosen by two book clubs. What made Mrs. Shore stand out from other creative writing teachers was her dedication to the creativity of the individual and her teaching methods of encouraging students to never give up. Her career spanned 75 years with Mrs. Shore submitting her first article to a Minneapolis paper at the age of 11. She began writing her first book at the age of 12. Throughout her career she was an editor at Harper's and a member of the prestigious writing group along with Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin Table in New York. She authored hundreds of short stories, serials and articles for national magazines, as well as book reviews and radio scripts. Shore also authored plays for youth. After leaving New York and Minnesota, Mrs. Shore moved to California with her son Steven. She continued to publish books, and with her writing and interviewing skills, quickly became involved with the stars in the Hollywood community. Hoping to give her son a better education and home environment, Mrs. Shore moved to Carmel when Steven was a teenager. At the time of her move Shore was already an author of all kinds of fiction, non-fiction and plays and poems. She quickly became an established author and teacher for the Carmel community readily sharing her knowledge of the publishing business and her experience as a writer with her students. Maxine Shore had much to share. A partial listing of books she authored or co-authored in addition to the Captive Princess are: Shipwreck Island, an adventure story for boys which was based on the 19th century diary of Alfred Glendenning who was shipwrecked at the tip of Cape Horn; a biography, Hero of Darien; a biography, Knight of the Wilderness; a historical book for boys, The Slave Who Dreamed; she also ghost-wrote two other published books; and Biography of Balboa. Mrs. Shore co-authored, The Destiny Stone, the story of the Stone of Scone with her son Steven. She just completed a book in May on creative writing. Mrs. Shore's students have published over 50 books as well as articles, short stories and poems. One student, Mary Ann Taylor also had a serial in Good Housekeeping. Her son Steven, plans as a fitting tribute to Mrs. Shore and her long career to publish poems and books not yet in print.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say for purposes of the record, this Member believes that life begins at conception. St. Augustine may not agree with me. The author of the amendment may not agree with me. We each make those decisions on our own. However, I would say to the gentleman that as far as the procedures we follow on committee, no one came to our staff, I as ranking member, and our legislative people, regarding this particular amendment. It is extremely complicated. Had I known, we would have asked for special hearings on this amendment. But I would say with all due respect to the gentleman, we were never afforded the opportunity to consider this. We did not know this was going to come up until just yesterday.

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in opposition to this amendment. If we think back to the reforms we have made in our farm programs, trade is at the center, international trade is at the center of trying to prepare and improve our programs for the 21st century. If we look at the trade ledger for our country today, the only positive parts of the account exist in the areas of agriculture largely. Over a third of our domestic production is exported and, in fact, we have been experiencing a record trade surplus just in agriculture of over $30 billion annually while the rest of the budget and trade ledger is in serious deficit at historic levels. So something in what we are doing is working, and the Market Access Program is an important piece of this puzzle. If Members look at who we are in competition with, it is U.S. farmers, individual farm families, individual producers against the European Union, against Asian production. It is very important that we help these farmers move their product into the international marketplace. This program is targeted to smaller producers and to farmers' cooperatives. It is not helping the big companies. In fact, if you look at the amount of money in the program, $90 million, it does not even come close to what the European Union is currently spending, over $500 million, half a billion dollars, in trying to promote their products in the international marketplace. These exports just in agriculture represent well over a million jobs in our country. Quite frankly, unless you have dealt in the international market, you really do not understand how subsidized a lot of our competitors' production actually is. Certainly their advertising programs are. So I would rise in strong opposition to this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to say with all due respect to the gentleman from Oklahoma who is offering this amendment, I respect his sincerity and the ferver with which he approaches this. As someone who does not support Federal funding of abortion myself, I have studied his proposal carefully. I am opposing him for three reasons, and I ask my colleagues to give me forbearance on this. The first is, as ranking member of this particular committee, number one, this issue never came before us. We have not had one hearing, certainly not at the subcommittee level. The FDA never referenced it in its testimony. Then when we went to the full committee, this was never considered. There have been absolutely no hearings on this matter, which is a very serious scientific and medical as well as moral issue, and I think it is inappropriate to try to attach it to this agriculture bill. We have never been faced with this on this subcommittee before. Secondly, I really do not think that at this point in the deliberations in this Committee of the Whole that we are going to make the proper, objective scientific judgment. Congress has never, and I underline, never previously legislated the approval or disapproval of any particular drug over which the FDA has responsibility for review. These decisions on the appropriateness of medical devices and medications are based in the agency solely on the scientific evidence available. None of that has been presented to any single Member here, with perhaps the exception of the author of the amendment. I do not know. But we certainly have not had the benefit of that. Thirdly, let me say that though the laws of our country say that abortion under certain circumstances is legal, certainly when the life of the mother is at stake, if this particular pill or medication or drug would somehow alleviate pain and suffering, there is no reason that we should in those circumstances disallow the FDA, with as little testimony as we have had on this and as little experience as we have had as a subcommittee and a full committee to deal with this, which actually should be in the authorizing committee, there is no reason that we should for any single life in this country deny that family the ability to have access to that medication if they would need it. But I really do not think that that should be the debate here today. Based on the lack of hearings in our own committee, and with respect for the chairman of our committee with a desire to try to have decent scientific evidence, full hearings on the matter, and finally not to deny any family that might find this necessary as a way to alleviate pain and suffering of the mother, I think voting for the amendment would be ill-advised at this time.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield the 15 minutes under my control in this debate to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), a key leader in this House and truly one of the most knowledgeable and hardworking and influential leaders on U.S. sugar policy. I would have to say that no one could be a finer spokesman both for our producers as well as our farm workers than the gentleman from Hawaii.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, there is no Member of this House that I have more respect for than my colleague, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). I congratulate his efforts along with the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass) to try to bring some additional attention in this particular program to some of the difficulties with lethal control methods that are used across this country on certain species. However, I rise to oppose this particular amendment, as did I yesterday, because I really think that it may have consequences that the authors might not yet have anticipated. First of all, there is a severe problem in this country with damage created by wildlife. It is not just in rural areas. We have lots of Members here, including myself, who represent major metropolitan airports where bird control is a very serious matter in order to try to preserve human life when people go into flight. In fact, a third of this particular appropriation is spent by that type of control around the country at these various facilities. In fact, the Federal Aviation Administration admits that about $1 billion of all of the wildlife damage across this country relates to birds in flight close to airports. They do not really follow the human sonar in their flight paths. So this is not just about coyotes in the western part of the country. Yesterday, after our debate here, Secretary Glickman at the Department of Agriculture did communicate with us, and I just want to read a portion of his letter into the record. It is important here, where he says: ``A reduction of $10 million or more would constitute a serious cut, perhaps up to one-third of the program's budget, and lead to draconian reductions of personnel in this account across the country.'' Since the program is largely cooperative and requires State and local matches, he is very concerned that what is going to happen is that the local shares will drop out. He says, ``Faced with a cut of this size, we may have no option but to eliminate work to protect endangered and threatened species, which is another function of the office, to prevent bird strikes at airports,'' which I have talked about ``and control animals that can transmit diseases to humans, such as rabies, plague, and lyme disease.'' I continue to be amazed in my own district, the largest share of which is an urban district, to watch householders want to try to bring deer to wander into their country and feed them with their backyard feeders, with lyme disease spreading. Last year, we had sightings in eastern Ohio of rabies from raccoon. So this is not something that is just out in the middle of Oklahoma or even New Mexico. But States like Ohio, which has more urban areas than any other in the country, are severely impacted. Truly, State and local governments cannot deal with this problem alone. A lot of the research and so forth is Federal research that benefits every single State. A lot of the tracking that is done is Federal tracking of these animals. Secretary Glickman advises us, we believe the President's budget proposal to gradually increase cost sharing is a more reasoned reform than the amendment being offered and is consistent with the bill's report language. Normally, I support my colleague, the gentleman from Oregon. But I think in this situation, where the Secretary of Agriculture does view this amendment as having difficulties and where we really feel that it is taking such a major share of funding that is necessary for animal control, wildlife control in different parts of the country, it really does not make sense, and it goes too far. I do think that his emphasis on trying to get nonlethal means, where possible, of animal damage control is a very helpful suggestion and one I know that the department is working hard on and, in fact, needs this research money that is a part of this account to pursue. I will tell you, when I see coyotes by the pack by our local metropolitan airport, which is located inside the city of Toledo, and we have coyotes running around the source systems of Los Angeles, we have a situation where this type of wild animal is breeding with dogs, and you do not produce a friendly animal as a result. In some cases, you cannot have a nonlethal solution. So where we try to minimize the damage to animals and we try to be as humane as possible, sometimes it is just not possible in some of these situations. With all due respect to my colleagues, the gentleman from Oregon and the gentleman from New Hampshire, I would say that the amendment goes too far, and I would urge Members to reject this amendment and follow the recommendations of our own Secretary of Agriculture.

Ms. KAPTUR

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Obey motion to strike this language. I came to the floor with a somewhat open mind, not having been active on this particular provision, but being concerned about it, as we moved through the appropriations process. I underline ``appropriations process.'' I think about some of the other authorizing language on this appropriations bill and how we have arrived at that language. For example, when the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt) brought up the proposal that is now incorporated in the bill that dealt with lifting agriculture from the sanctions mandate in Pakistan, there was give-and-take on the committee. Members did not agree, but ultimately, by the time we got to the floor, we were able to work out our concerns on that authorizing language on this bill. The same is true with the civil rights provisions in this bill. We technically should not have those provisions in this bill. We recognized a national need. There were differences of opinion. We had problems finding the money, shifting accounts, but we did it together on a bipartisan basis. What is troubling to me, in a bill that is very, very broadly acceptable in this Chamber, is we now have a provision that was incorporated as authorizing language dealing with a very, very important subject where thousands and thousands and thousands of livelihoods are at stake. And a Member like myself, who comes from the State of Ohio, where many of our dairy farmers have already been wiped out, so in a sense we are more neutral than other places because we are not as impacted directly as some of the others that are still struggling in their regions, but what troubles me is, when I see charts by our chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston), who has some piece of the truth, and someone else has a piece of the dream over here from Wisconsin and maybe another one from Massachusetts, that we are really not doing our best legislatively to present a bill here that has accommodated the differences in bringing it to the floor. So though I like some of what I hear in the way that the compact works to the advantage to preserve farming in the northeastern part of the country, this is really, thus far, the only part of the bill that has come before us here where there is this kind of major disagreement. It makes me concerned about the manner in which this particular provision was put into this appropriations bill. That is not how we work. We had a couple amendments offered in the committee at the subcommittee level. But truly, we did not have the working relationship that we did on the other issues. I just wanted to put that on the record because it is too important to ignore. Frankly, it should come through the authorizing committee, not the Committee on Appropriations, because this thing is extremely complicated and delicate. And no matter what we do, if we are not careful here, somebody, lots of somebodies are going to be hurt, whether it is directly farm families, whether it is consumers. And I guess I feel, as ranking member on this subcommittee, extremely uncomfortable that we could not have handled this particular measure in the same way as we did the other authorizing language that has been put on our bill where differences were worked out. This is extremely controversial. And because of it, because I am sensing that a major set of interests around our country feel that they have not been properly accommodated, I will support the Obey amendment. I would beg of the chairman of the full committee, in view of what he has said here, and the chairman of the Committee on Rules, to exercise their will in the same way as was done on some of the other issues that are in this bill, because no part of this country, no set of working people, no farmers, no consumers should be harmed by what we do here. I have grave doubts as I have listened. And therefore, I will support the Obey amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, we have no objections to this section and it is acceptable to us.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I support the gentleman in his opposition to this particular amendment. I think every single account in agriculture, whether it is research, whether it is conservation, whether it deals with emergency feeding, whether it is WIC, school lunch, we can go down the list, every single account needs more money and wants more money. I think we have been very fair. In the research accounts, I think that we accommodate various interests around the country. We just do not favor one set of perhaps powerful interests that would want to do research. On behalf of the United States of America, I think we have produced a good bill. A lot of this research is continuing research. It is unfortunate that when additional research dollars were sought and they attempted to make them mandatory, of course, there were no funds, user fees or other sources of revenue that could help us pay for those research projects. I think it would be unfair to try to rearrange the order that we have set now within the bill. I think we have been very fair to the research accounts. Unfortunately if people want more dollars for research, they are going to have to come up with revenue sources to pay for them. I support the chairman in his opposition to this amendment.