Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, I submit the following: City of Kingsland, Kingsland, GA Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2996, FY2010 Interior and Environment Appropriations Account: EPA-STAG Legal Name of Requesting Entity: City of Kingsland, GA Address of Requesting Entity: 107 South Lee Street P.O. Box 250 Kingsland, GA 31548 Description of Request: expand water and sewer infrastructure for the purposes of a new affordable housing development. Project would spur economic development in an underserved area. Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, Atlanta, GA Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2996, FY2010 Interior and Environment Appropriations Account: EPA-STAG Proposed Recipient: Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District Address of Recipient: 40 Courtland Street, NE Atlanta, Georgia 30303- Description of Request: funding received would be used to help local governments meet water resource plan requirements and be used for various stages of design and construction for several water projects including watershed management, wastewater treatment and water conservation.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the motion does not change existing law; therefore, the gentlewoman's point of order is invalid.

Mr. KINGSTON. I am, in its current form.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield myself such time as I may consume, Mr. Chairman. I want to make a statement on behalf of myself and Mr. Frank of Massachusetts and Ms. Brown of Florida regarding the domestic catfish industry, and if the Chair wants to respond, fine; but we have discussed this. And it actually came a little bit late in the hearing process to do anything about, but I wanted to give some background. In 2008 the farm bill created a new USDA catfish inspection program that requires the USDA to define what is considered a catfish. Now, the reason this is important is because the FDA traditionally does the inspection on fish, not the USDA. But now we put in this farm bill, the USDA, in the catfish business. This was pushed by the domestic catfish industry, asserting that Chinese catfish processors would not be able to meet the USDA equivalency requirements of continuous inspection and thus could not export competing products to the United States. And as somebody who comes from farm country, I know that dealing with foreign competition is very tough because sometimes they subsidize their producers, and maybe they have different regulatory requirements or they have some unfair advantage over the domestic producers. And yet at the same time, the ability to buy food internationally often brings down the price, increases the quality sometimes and increases the number of choices for our consumers. So it is a desirable thing for the United States Government to want to have people import food. But the FDA uses a hazard analysis critical control point risk-based system that has worked very, very well. But now, under this, we are having the USDA get into the catfish inspection program, which probably is not as--well, it's just not going to be as effective as the FDA program. The problem is the Chinese begin to grow and export a catfish to the United States called the ictaluridae. And, meanwhile, the Vietnamese started growing something called the pangasius. And these species are very different. Just like a human being is different from a baboon, so are these two different types of fish. But what is happening now, the domestic catfish industry is pushing the USDA to adopt a broad definition of catfish beyond the ictaluridae and include the pangasius. And I know you got all of that, Mr. Chairman, because I did too the first time. And the concern that I have is that the USDA really does not have the expertise to broaden their mission to start making definitions on a different type fish than what the farm bill asked them to look into. So I am very concerned about that, as is Mr. Frank, as is Ms. Brown from Florida. And I know other Members are as well, and we really do not want to see the USDA go beyond the mission and include this pangasius in their definition of catfish. And if the chairwoman wants to respond, I would be glad to yield.

Mr. KINGSTON. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield myself as much time as I may consume. I thank the gentlewoman, my counterpart, the chairwoman of the committee, for her great introductory remarks. I certainly support many parts of this bill. I want to start out by complimenting her on the process that we have and the relationship that we have. We have an open and honest relationship. We can agree to disagree and do it in an agreeable fashion. We have a lot of fun on the committee. We've had a lot of hearings. Many hearings where we are interrupted by votes and then we had to go back over there, sometimes it's just the Chair and I who go back; and we have our way with the witnesses, which is always fun because here in Washington we'd rather be the ones with the microphone than having somebody else have the microphone. We just have a good time with this. I think the staff works well together, and I want to recognize the staff for all their efforts at this time. On the majority staff, Martha Foley, Leslie Barrack, Jason Weller, Matt Smith, Kerstin Millius, Brian Ronholm and Letty Mederos. I thank everybody on that side for working with our folks. Our folks are Dave Gibbons, Merritt Myers, Meg Gilley, Bernie Tokarz and Jarr Rosenbaum who all worked closely with us over the years; and we appreciate the work of the staff. I think that if you look at one of the things that this bill has also done in this atmosphere where earmarks are under a lot of scrutiny, in 2006 this bill had $865 million in earmarks. The bill we are looking at tonight has $219 million. That is a substantial reduction. In 2008 there were about 400 earmarks in the bill, and now we're down to about 322. So we're making a lot of progress in reducing the number of earmarks, and that is a good thing. What this bill does not have though is spending reductions; and unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, we spend a lot of time talking about increase in spending, but we don't talk about efficiency and effectiveness. The purpose of Congress really shouldn't be just to spend more money on an authorized program. We should make sure that the programs are effective, they're efficient, and are doing their intended purpose. Increasing WIC or increasing food stamps, is that a good thing? I would challenge that premise that it's not necessarily a good thing. It may be a necessary thing to do. But just because we've increased food stamps or WIC spending, I don't think we can polish off our halos and pat ourselves on the back. I think it underscores a situation in society that we need to be addressing, some of it in this committee, some of it in the authorizing committee; but certainly all Members of Congress, what do you do to help encourage people to be more independent so they do not have to depend on the U.S. Congress year after year? Spending in this bill is up about 14 percent overall. It's a $123.8 billion bill. The discretionary portion is up nearly 13 percent from about $20 billion to nearly $23 billion. The FDA is up 13 percent, from $2.6 billion to about $3 billion; and CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has gone from $140 million to $160 million, which is about a 14 percent increase. Now for these increases, what will we get for the taxpayer dollar? What does it do for us? It just really, we know, grows the bureaucracy. It doesn't always get something done better or faster. I think that when we spend more money, we should have a measurement of the expectation, particularly in an economy that is floundering, an economy right now that has an $11 trillion national debt. I think my colleagues here don't need me to remind them where money comes from. We print it; we tax it from those who have earned it; or we borrow it from countries such as China, to whom we owe about $622 billion right now. Truly the national debt is a big problem. It's not the 500-pound gorilla in the room. It's, rather, a whole lot of gorillas that are in the room. I think as a Republican, one reason why we are in the minority is because we spent too much money. Republicans had a brand identity of being fiscal conservatives, and unfortunately we threw that away. There was a war. There was a hurricane. There were flooding problems. There was terrorism. There were domestic attacks. But that's not an excuse. However, now, particularly with this administration, spending seems to be on supercharge; and as government increases in size, the private sector seems to decrease in size. Take, for example, the recently passed stimulus program, $790 billion in deficit spending at a time when unemployment was 8 percent; and the President said we have to do something that will give us drastic and immediate results. Now instead of that unemployment rate being decreased, it's almost 10 percent; and 1.5 million new people are out of work since the passage of the stimulus program. Yet here we are again tonight, saying we can pass a bill with a 14 percent increase on it, and that is synonymous with good. Mr. Lewis on the committee actually offered a substitute amendment in what we call the 302(b) allocation that would have actually held spending to a 2 percent increase over last year's level. That was rejected on a party-line vote. But I think Mr. Lewis was trying to say, we've got to rein in control of the spending because it's clear more spending does not create more jobs. There are other issues in this bill which we, in the minority, have tried to address through amendments. Now unfortunately despite the fact that we turned in to the Rules Committee 90 amendments--and I'll say I had not seen those amendments. I was trying to focus our minority efforts on about 8 to 10 to 12 particular amendments, amendments which I thought were substantial, substantive, that were good government, maybe philosophical disagreements here or there; and I had lots of communication with our Members. So I'm not sure where the other 70 to 80 amendments came from. But I do know with the prefiling of amendments that Members are more inclined to throw a lot of amendments out there to the Rules Committee in order to protect themselves should they decide to go forward on their amendments because if they don't prefile, then they can't even have consideration. But because of the continuing practice of closed rules, most of these amendments, of course, were rejected. Tonight I believe we're going to be looking at two or three substantive amendments, then some earmark amendments, and then a couple of noncontroversial amendments. And I'm appreciative of that. But I do think that we should open up this process a lot more. There are other things that we should be discussing that are not in this bill, like a limitation on housing payments for illegal aliens. We need to be discussing categorical eligibility for food stamps; and this is a practice widespread right now in the States where if you qualify for one entitlement program, then you're automatically going to be enrolled in food stamps. What the unintended consequence of that is, some people who have substantial net worth are going to be able to get food stamps because they're unemployed. And we all know, tragically, a lot of people are unemployed right now; but some of them have a lot of assets in the bank. Yet under the State interpretations of categorical eligibility, they're automatically enrolled in food stamps. I think that's taking away food stamps from somebody who truly deserves it. We are unable to have an amendment on that. Also payment limitations to farmers who are ineligible for programs. From 2003 to 2006 the USDA discovered about $50 million that was paid to farmers who were not eligible to receive payments. I think that should be addressed in this bill a little more closely than it is. We did offer an amendment on that, but it was not supported. In 2006 the food stamp program made $1.29 billion in overpayments. An amendment that would have prohibited illegal recipients from getting the money I think would have been something good for this bill, but that was not accepted. There was another amendment offered on P.L. 480. It's interesting, P.L. 480, we have increased that substantially. That's our foreign food assistance program. It has popular, broad bipartisan support. But on the same hand, I don't think we had enough oversight, enough discussion as to why that spending needed to spike up to the tune of getting $700 billion in a supplemental bill and then another $464 million in this bill. These things are of great concern to me, and we will discuss some of these in more detail. I look forward to the debate. I look forward to the amendments. Again, I want to close with where I started with my chairwoman. I enjoy working on the committee, enjoy working with the staff; and we're going to continue to be engaged in this process. It won't just end tonight. We're going to make sure that we follow this bill all the way through; and to the degree that the minority is able to participate, we will be there. But thank you for letting us work with you. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Opposition of this amendment has nothing to do with the Agriculture Committee as much as it does the Rules Committee because there were so many amendments that the Rules Committee did not allow by the minority, and the reason that the Rules Committee said they did not allow them was because they were authorizing on an appropriation bill. This is authorizing on an appropriation bill. While there is a good reason for it, it is still something that I think is philosophically inconsistent with what the Rules Committee has been telling us for the last 24 hours. I will ask for a recorded vote on this. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, I thank the gentlewoman, and as we both know, we have spent a lot of time talking also about the USDA and Chinese chicken and that issue. And one of the concerns that--this underscores the thing on catfish, that it is the USDA's domain, really. They have the expertise and the track record on fish, whereas the USDA has a track record on chicken, poultry and beef domestically; and I know that you do have concerns in terms of their expertise to look at the reimportation of poultry products from China. And I wasn't going to really discuss that, but, certainly, if the gentlewoman would like to, we have had----

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina. I'm sorry for throwing you off a minute ago. I certainly appreciate the time. I speak against this rule, Mr. Speaker, simply because it's a closed rule. You know, we come here, 435 Members representing 300 million people all across the United States of America with different ideas, and we are about to vote on a $123.8 billion bill in which these 435 Members of Congress have different ideas of how to change it. Now, you know the expression, you're dressed up with no place to go. That's what it's like being on the Appropriations Committee. Maybe even rehearsing for a dance, and when you get to the dance, you find out you're not even allowed to dance. Well, that's what happens. Ms. DeLauro and I worked very closely over the last several months-- and, indeed, over the last several years--working on agriculture issues. We have some sincere agreements, sincere disagreements, but we always have a dialogue going. But now here, as we are in maybe not the home stretch, but at least the halfway point, we find out that the minority Members really can't participate today except for in a very narrowly focused gag rule. We submitted 90 amendments--we, Democrats and Republicans--in an effort to improve this bill, and of those, I believe 12 have been agreed upon. And of those, four are noncontroversial and five of them are a little bit superficial, if not routine. I am just so disappointed in the fact that we can't get back to regular order. We have quoted David Obey, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, many times on the House floor and his words to the effect that when he was in the minority, how disappointed he was. And he pointed out that when we lose the rights of the minority, we lose the right to be called the greatest deliberative body left in the world. We had a good debate in the Rules Committee, and I thank my friend, Mr. McGovern, for facilitating that debate last night. And I don't believe that the Rules Committee made the final decision. I think the final decision was made down the hall by some staffers. I just believe that this really tightlipped, ironclad straitjacket on debate is bad for the system, as Mr. Obey lamented in 2006. You know, there is a great line from ``Fiddler on the Roof.'' The star of it, I think his name is Tevye--I'm not sure, but I know these are the words. And he said in the song, ``If I Were a Rich Man,'' ``Lord who made the lion and the lamb, you decreed I should be what I am. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan, if I were a wealthy man?'' And so my question to my friends on the Rules Committee is, would it really spoil some vast eternal plan if you had an open rule? And you know the answer is certainly not. And you know that when we were in charge for 12 years, we had open rules--7 out of 12 years we had open rules on every single appropriations bill except for Legislative Branch. And as respects the Ag bill, we only had 1 year that we had a modified closed rule, and that was after 16 hours of debate. So what is the vast eternal plan that we would spoil if we were allowed, in a representative democracy, an open rule? What would really happen? Is it that the philosophies of the majority are so fragile that they are like a card house, that if a Republican sneezed in the form of an amendment the whole thing would tumble down and the Pelosi empire would come crashing to the floor and be exposed for some bad and evil thing? I don't believe that's the case. I think, frankly, that this body would do well with open rules and more debates. And I think it would foster a spirit of bipartisanship, because I think what we would find out is what most legislative bodies find out in State legislatures, that you've got good ideas from Republicans and good ideas from Democrats.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentlewoman. If you think about it, Mr. Speaker, some of the good ideas of Democrats melding--cross-pollination now--with good ideas of Republicans and good ideas of Independents, I think that would be a very healthy thing. And then this bill would go out of this Chamber to the other body, which we know has no good ideas whatsoever--just joking there. A little levity on the House floor is okay. The point is we could get together as Democrats and Republicans on the House floor and then go debate the Senate, and maybe our ideas would prevail. And those ideas wouldn't necessarily be branded as Democrat or Republican, but they would be branded as American ideas, and they would be of a representative democracy. So I hope we will vote this rule down and send it back to the Rules Committee, and then we will challenge that vast eternal plan--maybe not the one of the Democrat Party, but maybe the one of our forefathers-- that envisioned open debate in an open society as an underpinning of democracy.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the House Republican standards on congressionally directed funding, I am submitting the following information regarding funding included in H.R. 2997, the House Agriculture Appropriations bill of 2010. Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2997 Account: CSREES, Special Grants Legal Name of Recipient: University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Address of Recipient: 101 Conner Hall, Athens, GA 30602 Description of Request: Funding in the amount of $1,000,000 will be used to advance farm energy efficiencies by coupling advanced information, communication and control technologies with improved plant materials, byproduct use and energy capture conversion techniques. Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2997 Account: National Resources Conservation Service, Conservation Operations Legal Name of Recipient: Georgia Soil and Water Conservation Commission Address of Recipient: 4310 Lexington Rd, Athens, GA 30603 Description of Request: Funding in the amount of $2,423,000 will help farmers address existing and emerging water supply issues with on-farm water storage. Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2997 Account: CSREES, Special Grants Legal Name of Recipient: University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Address of Recipient: 101 Conner Hall, Athens, GA 30602 Description of Request: Funding in the amount of $209,000 will allow for the development of new cultivars which combined with pre- and post- harvest management practices will increase production efficiency and improve quality of fruit delivered to consumers. Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2997 Account: CSREES, Special Grants Legal Name of Recipient: University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Address of Recipient: 101 Conner Hall, Athens, GA 30602 Description of Request: Funding in the amount of $346,000 will provide for the development of Web-based systems and in-field practices to provide water conservation alternatives that are distinct, direct and economical. Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2997 Account: ARS, Salaries and Expenses Legal Name of Recipient: ARS National Peanut Research Lab, Dawson, GA Address of Recipient: 1011 Forrester Drive SE, Dawson, GA 39842 Description of Request: Funding in the amount of $1,200,000 will be used to produce the best management practices that will lead to water conservation. Requesting Member: Congressman Jack Kingston Bill Number: H.R. 2997 Account: CSREES, Special Grants Legal Name of Recipient: University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Address of Recipient: 101 Conner Hall, Athens, GA 30602 Description of Request: Funding in the amount of $178,000 will be used to evaluate new disease management tactics for control of Phytopthora blight. No treatments or combination of measures exist to effectively suppress Phytopthora losses which often devastate the production of vegetable crops.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 seconds to my friend to finish her sentence.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, for many years the funding level for broadband programs or Rural Loan Program was handled by the Rural Utility Service in the Department of Agriculture. That funding was about $400 million. With the stimulus package that we passed in February, $790 billion package, there was about $7 billion for broadband grants and loan programs. Two and a half billion of that money went to the Department of Agriculture, and the rest went to a brand-new program which really did the same thing and duplicated what is done in the Department of Agriculture. It all should have gone there. But if you think about a program going from 400 million to about 7 billion, that's not a plus- up. That's winning the lottery. Now, I can only focus on $2.5 trillion, and you can't even do that because that's already in the stimulus bill already passed into law, but we can't focus on the $400 million. What this amendment does, and frankly if I could have offered a cleaner amendment, I would have just had a straight cut of the $400 million. But what this does, it is similar; it says you can't use the $400 million that is in this until we have used the $2.5 billion that has already been passed into law. The reason why that is important is when the stimulus bill was passed, there was so much talk about we are going to use this money immediately, shovel-ready projects, jobs will be created. And as we know, that was when the unemployment level was 8 percent and now it is nearly 10 percent. It has not stopped the bleed and job loss. But the fact is that $2.5 billion is still sitting there, and yet we are coming along now and giving another $400 million. What this amendment says is we can't use the $400 million until the $2.5 billion is paid down. I urge support of the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to say to my friend, the chairwoman of the committee, that is a very eloquent argument for the use of a broadband loan program, but it has nothing to do with this amendment because the broadband loan program is not under trial here. But let me explain it this way to the Members who are not on the committee. I love going to Ryan's, and they probably have Ryan's in Connecticut, but Ryan's is one of those all-you-can-eat buffets. You go through the line and there is fried chicken and there is fried fish, and fried catfish, probably imported, who knows? There are all kinds of vegetables and desserts. You go through and you fill your plate up, and then you are allowed for the $8 price to go back and get some more food. Well, let's just think going through the line was the stimulus program, Mr. Chairman. We filled up our plates, and I often found myself as a father of four saying to my kids, you can't go get more food until you finish what is on your plate. It just makes sense. Go ahead and eat the four pieces of fried chicken that you got before you go and grab another one that you don't have and you don't need. That is all this amendment is. It is not a trial of broadband. Broadband is funded by $2.5 billion under the RUS in the USDA under existing law, period. So $2.5 billion. And all I am saying to the oftentimes gluttonous government here in Washington, D.C., is, don't go back through the buffet line until you have consumed what you've got. And when you have emptied that plate, then you can go back and get that fifth piece of fried chicken in the form of $400 million for broadband loans. At that point I don't know who we will be loaning the money to because, as I said earlier, there is another $3.5 billion in another program in another department. But that, too, is a matter of law, and that is not under scrutiny either. The only thing I am saying is what I have said to my four children over the years when we would go to the Ryan buffet: Don't get more food on your plate until you finish what you've got. I urge support of this. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me say this, representing a very rural district, a district where you can't get cell phone coverage, and a lot of the wireless technology is in already, I support what is going on. I agree with the chairman; it would have been nice for all of the money to go into RUS and not the Department of Commerce because it was an existing infrastructure for making this loan program. The only thing I am saying is you don't get the new money until you have spent the existing money.

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu).