Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman from Ohio for yielding to me. I wanted to speak tonight, Mr. Chairman, about the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway, which stretches 161 miles from the South Carolina border to the Florida border going through the 1st District of Georgia; and if one measures the number of miles by the coastline, it is probably five or six times that. I live by the Intercoastal Waterway. I have a boat. My friends have boats. My constituents have boats. The water is filling in, and it is a big problem in terms of recreational boating. My concern is that the Office of Management and Budget, the OMB, in their formula does not consider the economic impact of a recreational boater when deciding if a waterway should be dredged or not. In Georgia, for example, the last time we had serious dredging of the Intercoastal Waterway was in 2002. We have asked for $2.5 million for dredging for Georgia 2 years in a row, and because of the tight constraints, the committee has not been able to do that. It has been the same way with the Senate. They are trying to work on something, too. Senator Saxby Chambliss and Senator Johnny Isakson and I are all in agreement that this needs to be addressed, but when the Office of Management and Budget is looking at the commercial traffic ranks of the Intercoastal Waterway, they only consider the big tonnage, the commercial shipping. They do not consider the light loading, the recreational boater. The recreational boater is the guy who goes out there, pulls his children on skis, has a camera, has a cooler, packs a bag of baloney sandwiches, has a lot of Coca-Cola, which in another part of the country he is probably carrying Pepsi, and spends a lot of money on the local economy, a significant amount of money. One marina alone told me that their receipts will be in excess of $500,000. If the Intercoastal Waterway was closed up, then that marina will be gone. Those five to twelve jobs that they have will be gone. The money that his clients bring into the area, buying parts for their boats and related recreational equipment in skis and fishing poles and so forth, that will be gone as well. We need to get the Office of Management and Budget to change their funding formula so that they will consider the economic impact of the recreational boater just as high or along the same line or with the same yardstick as they do commercial boaters. I had an amendment to that effect. I have not offered the amendment because this committee has worked so closely with us on a lot of issues. I know that the staff was not exactly appreciative if we were going to try to authorize something on an appropriation bill. It was not appropriate. So I am not offering that amendment, but I know the staff has been very sympathetic to this issue, as have you, Mr. Chairman, and I just wanted to thank you, but say that, along the line, we are not going to let this issue go. We need to have the Office of Management and Budget change their funding formula, and I intend to pursue legislation on that, and I just wanted to thank you for all the support you have given us on some of the other dredging issues and wanted to make this point, though, on the record.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, well, I had an opportunity to speak to Mr. Portman a few minutes ago and just pled the case real briefly with the promise of a follow-up phone call. I do want to thank you for all the harbor dredging that you have helped us with, Mr. Visclosky has helped us with. The staff has gone above and beyond the call of duty on that. You guys have been magnificent, but we also have this intercoastal problem with the recreational boaters that is a tremendous issue in our area. So we want to continue to work with you, and I really appreciate everything you have done.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman; and I just want to say that the Corps of Engineers has had water control plans in place for 50 years. The plans are guidelines so that everybody can kind of have some input and some feedback on what is working and what is not. This is an area that is one of the fastest-growing parts of the United States of America, and their own regulations that the corps has, they know they need to update them. So what we are saying is let the system that is in place stay in place without Congress inserting language that pulls the rug out from under it. If this needs to be done on a congressional level, then let us do so with all the States' delegations together. Let us not have two States against one State. Let us all sit down and work out a legislative solution if a legislative solution is necessary. I do not think that it is right now. I think that the best thing for us to do is to let the Corps of Engineers continue to work the process as it has been set up and as it is intended to do so.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, can I ask how much time we have?

Mr. KINGSTON. I will yield 10 seconds to the gentleman from Texas if 10 seconds will help him.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of our time to the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I certainly applaud all of the efforts of Mr. Chabot for cutting spending and so forth. And yet I find myself on the opposite side with him on this. The reason is that Tom Friedman has written a very famous book right now called, The World is Flat. And the world is flat, and it is flat because we are in a global economy, where a farmer in the Philippines or in Indonesia or in Russia can compete with a farmer from Ohio or Georgia, just as easy as if he was in the same country. What the MAP program does is it helps sell our goods overseas. Two or three hours ago when we opened up this bill, I said that one of our farmers' big challenges right now is foreign subsidies competing against American ag products. Well, quite often, the World Trade Organization seems to allow foreign farmers to have subsidies but not American farmers. Mr. Chairman, this is one tool that helps us combat that. I would point out that the ag exports at this point are over $64 billion, the highest level in history. And one reason is this, is because the Market Access Program has shown our farmers, whether you are growing Vidalia onions or peanuts or strawberries, how to sell your goods overseas. And for every $1 billion in sales overseas, there is about 16,000 domestic jobs that are created. In fiscal year 2005, almost 1 million Americans had jobs that depend on U.S. American agricultural exports. MAP is an integral part of that program. And yet it is not just for farmers alone, here, come get your check. They have to contribute up to 50 percent of the program's cost. And since 1992, the MAP participants have increased their contributions from 30 percent to 166 percent. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Chabot Amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I would like to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I want to say on behalf of the Chair, we are ready to accept this amendment. I know you have worked very hard on this facility, and I know your passion for it. The committee accepts the amendment.

Mr. KINGSTON. How much time is remaining, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. I certainly appreciate the intent of what the gentlemen are trying to accomplish. I have a lot of sympathy for it, but I oppose the American Farm Bureau at this time. The reason is, we do need to identify those animals who are involved in the food chain for human consumption. Yet, at the same time, because our language, we worked very closely with the authorizing committee, requires that before it is implemented that we have comments in the Federal Registry which at that time people can weed out those nonessential animals, because I don't want a national bureaucracy knowing about every single animal that I own or a rancher or farmer may own. During that comment period, it certainly would be my intention, and I think most of us on the authorizing and on the appropriating committee, to make sure what you are saying is correct. So, at this point, I also want to point out that we are delaying any of these funds to be available to the USDA until it publishes the advance notice of proposed rulemaking about the plan. We are doing everything we can in a public comment period. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the authorizing committee, Mr. Goodlatte.

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

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to urge a ``no'' vote and say that we are going to join Mr. Paul in fighting a new bureaucracy and also to weed out an excessive burden on small farmers and too much information to the Federal Government. That is why we have delayed the funding of this until the advanced notice for proposed rulemaking has been filed, and we are going to work on a bipartisan basis to get that right. So please vote ``no.''

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to say this, and I appreciate what the gentleman from Arizona is doing, because I think that we all need to be accountable for anything that is in the bill or anything we vote on. One of my gripes with the other body is that they keep things in committee, and it is an incumbent protection system. So I think having the opportunity to come down here and debate and fight for what we believe is important. I want to point out, last year, our budget passed in the final version out of conference committee 212-214. That is a two-vote margin. So if you put more spending in the budget, it probably would not have passed. If you put less spending in the budget, it probably would not have passed also. It truly was a balance between those who wanted to spend more and those who wanted to spend less. And there are a lot who want to spend less. However, politics is the reality of the possible or the passable. What you have sometimes is budgets that are hard to justify. I remember Mr. Obey telling a good story about something called the soldier fly. Down in the area I represent, there is a lot of agriculture. There are a lot of chicken growers, and chicken growers have chickens in hen houses. But, unfortunately, or fortunately, in a lot of rural areas, it has turned urban. And what do chickens have? Chickens have flies. They have blue flies. People build houses, and then the first thing they do is complain about the flies coming from the chicken houses. And the farmers were there first, but it does not matter. Well, enter the soldier fly. The soldier fly comes in, Mr. Chairman, like a big hero and eats the blue flies; solves the problems for the farmer, solves the problem for the homeowners in rural areas. And this is a big economic issue, getting rid of the flies in chicken houses. Well, we want to know, what can you do to foster more soldier flies? And so you study soldier flies. It is a nontoxic way to take care of pollution, but of course, it is great fodder for Reader's Digest to say they are studying the mating habits of soldier flies, which is not necessarily true. But having the opportunity to come out here, and it was not an earmark, but to come out here and have an opportunity to debate things is good. I think it is a healthy exercise. But I want to say this as a committee member: When things are in the budget, and this budget, as you know, is down 8 percent from last year and that Member priorities are down $35 million, you are under budget. And what somebody in California agriculture or somebody from Ohio agriculture supports may be different from what people in, say, Georgia support. But the overall goal is within the budget. This year we have only passed a budget on the House side by a mere I believe 7 or 6 votes. So we are all walking that balance. But I want to say I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment, but I do like this process. I also want to say on behalf of the Appropriations Committee members, we do favor earmark reform. But we also believe when you have things like the Bridge to Nowhere that don't come from an appropriation bill, you have to open up the process to all of the other committees as well. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Simpson).

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

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Bonilla, for the great job that he has done, and the leadership that he has provided. And I thank my friend, Rosa DeLauro, for all the good work that she has done and the bipartisan cooperation that we have had on this bill. We don't agree on everything, but we agree on ag policy and trying to look out for the farmers together, and all of the various commodities and programs that are in this important bill. And this is certainly one of the greatest subcommittees in Congress. Mr. Chairman, farmers today have lots of challenges, financing. Long- term financing for farmers, they can't get loans the way business people can get loans. They have problems with labor. The immigration issue is the hot issue of the day right now. Well, it has been a hot issue down on the farm for years as they have tried to get labor who will go out there in the hot sunshine and pick apples and pick peaches and pick onions, and trying to work with the H2A program that can be very difficult to comply with. And while farmers are trying to work with H2A, along comes legal services funded by the Federal Government and suing farmers for technical violations often and not really substantive violations. They have problems with environmental issues, in that we have very strict EPA laws, which their international competitors do not always have. And Ms. Kaptur, our friend from Ohio, often talks to us about Ohio tomatoes. And yet we know in Mexico they make tomatoes that can be competitive with those of Ohio tomatoes, but they do not have to follow the same labor or environmental laws. Mr. Chairman, that is just one of the examples. And then we talk about unfair trade practices and what is subsidized and what is not. And so often the WTO, which is an organization most Americans do not even know about; yet the farmers, they are very mindful of what the WTO is up to, because so often the rulings seem to come down against American farmers. Mr. Chairman, despite everything that farmers are up against, our food program and our food supply is the best any world has ever seen, any nation in the world at any time. Americans spend 11 cents on the dollar on groceries. We spend 43 cents on the dollar on recreation, from skiing to jet skiing, to boats, to fishing to buying CDs and going to movies and shows; we spend 43 cents on the dollar, but only 11 cents on the dollar for food. And for that, we have fruit all year long. We have meat in great abundance at low prices all year long. We have, as Mr. Obey knows well, milk. And there used to be milk shortages all over the country. And yet we do not have those kinds of shortages anymore. We do have a very complex, hard-to-explain agriculture system in America, and yet the product on the shelf in the grocery stores across America beats all in the world. We need to all support this bill. It is a bipartisan bill. It is well thought out, well debated. There are going to be things I am going to comment on later on.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, in less than 6 months, farmers will begin to plan for the next crop year. Without extending the storage and handling fee program for peanuts, all over the Southeast there will be problems in the ag world. As we know, when we did away with the peanut quota program, the farmers went from a support price of over $600 down to $355. Now, in exchange for such a reduction in the support price and elimination of the quota program, farmers were also successful in negotiating a $50 per ton storage and handling fee. The reason why this was important is because when peanuts are ready to harvest, the market might not be at the optimal selling price for the peanuts. Likewise, when the shellers and the folks in manufacturing and processing need peanuts, there might at times be an abundance and at other times there might be a deficit. So for everyone involved in the peanut food chain, having a good storage and handling program is important. You can't just put peanuts in any warehouse and keep them in fresh order. You have to have a specialized warehouse, and that is why this program is important. This program is important not just to those in the peanut business directly, the farmer, the producer, the processor, the user, and the shelling facility; but it is also important for rural southeast America. The peanut program is bigger in poor counties across the southeastern States. You don't have a problem with the peanut program in Atlanta, Georgia, or in Birmingham, Alabama, or St. Simons Island, Georgia, or Savannah, Georgia. You have it in the small areas, like Cook County and Berien County and Candler County and Bulloch County, counties that do not have the growth in many cases of those in the urban areas. This program has been successful from South Carolina to southern Mississippi to Alabama. Just one example: in Donalsonville, Georgia, the American Peanut Growers Group, a co-op comprised of 85 different peanut producers, invested in a shelling facility after the last farm bill and created 50 new full-time jobs and six new buying points throughout the region, a great success story. In Tifton, Georgia, over $18 million has been invested in a new dome storage peanut shelling facility that employs 60 people. This is a product of 56 different peanut producers in making this shelling plant. Examples of this are all over here. And I know the gentleman from Alabama is here and he has seen it from his own area, but even though the chairman of the Ag Committee has been a good supporter of farm programs and the peanut program, striking this language on a point of order actually hurts us at this time. Because as these peanut farmers are making growing decisions, we have just taken away one of the great economic tools they need to successfully decide if they are going to be planting peanuts or planting corn or planting soybeans or cotton. What I would say to the members of the committee is as this bill moves through the process without this language in it, it is quite likely our friends in the other body will restore this language, and I am hoping that the Senators from Georgia are able to do that. The language was put in the bill by me, Mr. Bishop, and Congressman Boyd, bipartisan support and southeastern agriculture support, and we are hoping to get it restored at some point along the line. So I just wanted to come down here on the point of order to make sure folks know that even though this is going to be stricken today, we do feel like it does not kill this, but for the time being.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and support of the budget, and I support the budget for a number of reasons. But I do want to say, as I listen to the arguments from the other side, they are a little bit all over the place. And yet that is not unusual, because if you are in the minority party, you can pick and choose your relevancy. And generally the message that we are hearing from that side is it cuts too much here, it doesn't spend enough there, I don't like this, I don't like that. And yet they don't have a unified plan except to vote ``no'' on everything. We won't pick up a vote, you guys know that. The only thing they are unified by is a ``no.'' They cannot even within their own caucus support a budget that could get a majority. And we would like to work with them. We just heard they don't like the Medicare prescription drug benefits, so they are, I guess, against the Medicare prescription drug benefit and want to return to the days when seniors were choosing between food on their table and medicine that they needed from their doctor. We have heard they are supporting a Social Security tax increase. Well, I had a lot of Social Security town meetings; I didn't hear anybody who wanted to increase taxes on Social Security. I don't know if that is an official view or just one Member, but I do know that in terms of Social Security, there again it was a big ``no'' vote because they did not want to participate. Now, what they also don't like is the economic prosperity that we are enjoying right now, because their whole view is if somebody is making money, then they are bad and they are evil, because they have this obsession with the wealthy in our society; unless they are a union, business agent, or a Barbra Streisand and some of the big wheels of Hollywood who fund their coffers, then it is okay to be rich and wealthy. The interesting thing, though, is that under Republican Party policy, the economy has done so well. And think about this: that the domestic gross product grew by 8 percent the first quarter of 2006, and in the month of April alone 138,000 new jobs were created. We know, because it is an economic fact, that since our tax reductions went into play for farmers and small businesses, that 5 million new jobs were created. And there is a very important thing in there, business expensing, that allows the bicycle shops back home and the clothes store and the pet shops to expand and get a tax deduction for doing so. I know the Democrat Party doesn't like business, which would include small business. I think it is okay to have a healthy distrust of some of the big Wall Street guys. Some of those firms, after all, are Democratic. So we should kind of distrust some of those. They were big Clinton supporters, as I remember some of that crowd. But small businesses need this, because they can grow, and we need to give them some tax incentives. In terms of tax receipts, as I sit in the Appropriations Committee, and bill after bill the Democrats want to spend more on and they want to take away this mythical tax cut for the rich, and the idea is because the rich are paying their taxes that the deficit is down. And yet the Treasury Department has reported that the receipts are up $137 billion, that is 11 percent, in the first 7 months of the year, of the fiscal year of 2006 which started October 1. So receipts are up 11 percent and yet taxes are down. Now, why is that? Well, you could put it this way. If a business was doing three or four transactions a day and we were getting a tax on each transaction, now they are doing eight or nine, ten transactions a day, and we are still getting that tax. So we are taxing more because there is more activity and there are more transactions in the business world. And, again, because of that, the revenues are up $137 billion. Now, last year they were up $274 billion, or an increase of 14.6 percent in fiscal year 2005. That is very significant for folks to remember. And, as Mr. Saxton said, President Kennedy, President Reagan, and now President Bush have shown the American people spend their money better than we do in Washington. And, again, I want to speak as an appropriator. I am in these meetings and I am convinced the American people can do better with their own money than we can. It stimulates the economy, it creates jobs, it is good for all of us. And then, in Washington, we do get more revenues. Do I want to cut spending? Yes, I do. Do I think we need to reform entitlement? Yes, I do. I want to work on a bipartisan basis to do that, though, because I think that is the way the American people want to see us cooperate.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding, and I thank my friend from Massachusetts as well. I have to say I just got in on the tail end of this, but I wanted to come down and say I think that allowing these budgets to be discussed tonight is a good thing. The Democrats will have two budgets that they are offering. The Republicans will have one, and we had the other one; so I guess it is two to two. I know we would have 435 individual budgets if everybody could have something that they fully believed in. But, unfortunately, in a large body of 435 people where you have to have 218 votes or at least a plurality to get something done, you have got to leave behind some budgets. And I think this is going to give us a night of some good debates. We will be able to discuss priorities, both priorities in spending and priorities in cutting and reducing and changing the face of government. I want to point out that last year, and Mr. Putnam may remember, but I believe we passed the budget finally, and Mr. Spratt might know, 214- 212, which somewhat shows the precarious position of a dynamic body, that if you moved spending up a little bit, you would not have been able to pass it. If you reduced it a little bit, you would not have been able to pass it. So in this large institution we had a budget that just was balanced as we could get it, and I think we are probably going to be heading in that direction again. And I do not think that is a bad thing. I think all this debating is good, and that our arguments that we will have tonight in a friendly spirit will also carry on to each of the 11 appropriation bills, I guess these days, 10 subcommittees, but these things will be carried on, and we will see them again and again in committee and subcommittee form.