Mark Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the resolution today. Our hearts and prayers go out to those who have lost their loved ones in the recent atrocious and cowardly acts. Our spirits are lifted by the countless acts of courage and heroism and for those that have sacrificed their lives for others. To some, we appeared weak yesterday. Yet as we gathered together to pray under the Capitol dome just minutes ago, I am reminded of Paul's words to the Corinthians, ``When I am weak, then I am strong.'' In my own life, I have repeatedly found that it is only when I am weak, by surrendering my own will to God's will, that I am strong. America itself has repeatedly shown that when it appears weak, it is strong. We need only to look to the example of Pearl Harbor. I have great confidence that under God's guidance, America will rise from this moment of apparent weakness and again serve as a strong beacon of hope and liberty to the world.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to introduce a resolution honoring artists participating in the Federal Duck Stamp Program, especially Minnesota's very own, Robert Hautman. Robert has successfully won his second Federal Duck Stamp competition with a winning pintail design after winning his first award in 1997- 1998. Robert and two of his brothers, James and Joseph, have seen their art featured on thirty-five state and federal stamps. From the Oval Office to the Smithsonian Institute, their creations have been displayed in prominent places throughout Washington, D.C. Congratulations Robert on this well-deserved award.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the amendment to grant California waiver from the Clean Air Act. This is not about California being singled out, as we are hearing from several people, because all 50 States are required to live by the Clean Air Act and have been for some time. This is not about MTBE, which is harmful to our drinking water, because there is a better alternative. Yes, ethanol does help gas burn cleaner. Members only have to go back to their high school class to know that increased oxygen in gas will help make it burn cleaner. This is not about ethanol making gas more expensive because with today's price of oil and other commodities, ethanol is cheaper than gasoline. This is about ensuring clean air for our children and grandchildren and not increasing the ozone problem that we have. It is about expanding renewable domestic sources of energy. And it is about increasing demand, yes, for important commodities that help us create jobs and economy in our rural areas. Mr. Chairman, I urge Members to oppose this amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall Nos. 211, 212 and 213 I was unavoidably detained by airline delays. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on each rollcall.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time, and I rise to support this bill but to express my disappointment that the House Committee on Agriculture voted last week to reduce the supplemental aid to farmers in the supplemental farm package last week. I opposed the amendment by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) to reduce the supplemental aid to $5.5 billion and supported the chairman's proposal to provide $6.5 billion in support; the same level as in prior years. Our farmers are struggling, and we must provide them with the aid they need. This funding bill is better than no assistance, but we really needed that additional billion dollars to help our farmers. I consider this a first step towards ensuring that we provide our farmers the support they need. We continue to wrestle with historically low prices, and yet this year, in our part of the country, we are having very poor planting conditions and are expecting to have lower yields than in prior years. So we need more aid to maintain the same level as prior years, not less. Now is certainly not the time to cut it, particularly with energy costs driving up the cost of fertilizer and everything else. Mr. Speaker, I intend to help the chairman and other committee members in an effort to restore funding as the process moves forward.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green) for yielding to me and thank the gentleman for his leadership on this very important issue. People may ask, how did this ever come about? How did we get this dairy compact? The gentleman gave a little bit of the history, but the U.S. Constitution does allow States to enter into compacts upon passage of State laws and the consent of Congress. These consents have been granted in some cases to allow States to work together on parklands or transportation systems or waterways; however, there is no precedent for price-fixing compacts evidenced in this situation. This is the only case where we have allowed a region of the country to set a price-fixing compact against other regions of the country, and how this affects us is if you have excess production of milk that you do not drink with cereal or otherwise, you generally turn that into cheese. So if there is excess production in the Northeast, they convert that into cheese. For those major milk-producing States that include Minnesota and Wisconsin, but California, Idaho, Arizona, several others, that takes away from our cheese market. In fact, the Northeast Dairy Compact was fined $1.76 million in 1998 for the extra amount of money that the USDA had to consume in buying extra production coming out of the Northeast. They have since instituted just recently some type of supply management in the Northeast, but if you think of how un-American this is, let us just say we decided that we do not think that Michigan should be disproportionately producing so many cars, so we are going to have, the rest of the country, a non-Michigan auto compact where we are going to produce the autos we need outside of Michigan and let Michigan only produce the cars that they can use in Michigan. Orange juice. What if we decided that we are going to have an other than Florida oranges compact where we are going to produce our own orange juice and let Florida just produce the amount of orange juice that they can consume in Florida. Or movies in California. Or you can go on and on and on. I mean, this is ridiculous. It is un-American. It undermines where we have been strong in the past and what has made America strong in the past; that we are one country, that we do not have divisions among States. Our Founding Fathers were very nervous about that happening. Why we would let this happen and undermine our strong dairy industry in Minnesota, Wisconsin, the upper Midwest and other States around the country is something that is beyond me. It is something that, if American people understood this issue, they would be against it. If they understood, not just that they were being taken advantage of as consumers, but that one area of the country is going and pitting against another area of the country's strength, they would be uprising and saying we want to end this. Certainly we do want to end this. I appreciate the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green) reserving this hour to make sure that we can help educate the American people on this subject.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that this dairy compact is kind of like salt in the wounds that are already being put in place by an underlying milk marketing system that, again, hurts the natural dairy producing States of this country. When in the 1930s we implemented milk marketing orders, that was designed to make sure that fresh milk was available all over the country. It may have made sense back then; but right now, it divides milk into four classes, all of which receive a different price. The class 1 milk which we drink out of our glass gets 33 percent or more higher price than what we make in the cheese. Since we are primarily exporters of dairy, we convert about two-thirds of our production in our region into cheese; and, therefore, our farmers receive more than a third less already, just setting the dairy compact aside, for our milk production than those like the northeast that are producing primarily for fluid, milk. So we are already being penalized by an archaic system that we have not been able to overcome because of the resistance of people in the northeast. We are already being penalized. Then when they have one down, the dairy compact is really piling on. It is piling on and saying, okay, you know, you are already only getting 60 percent of what we get, but that is not enough for us. We want more. We want to take more out of your income. We want to take more of your dairy farmers and put them out of business. We want to try to prop up what we have. It really has not had that beneficial impact. They are still losing family farms in the northeast area. They are still not really having the benefits that they speak of at the same time that they are clearly penalizing us. As the gentleman mentioned, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Many of the people I know, I live in a rural area of Minnesota called Watertown where there are many dairy farmers that go to our church. I could name off names of dairy farmers in the last year that I know that have gone out of business. The milk marketing orders and the Northeast Dairy Compact are to blame for that. The gentleman's father, I know, is in the medical profession; and the first rule they learn is to do no harm. It would be good for us as legislators to know, to do no harm. Well, this is clearly something that harms Americans, harms millions of Americans, favors a very small few, and it is something that we should stand up against. It is something that Americans should stand up against. Write your Congressman wherever they may be and say this is something I do not believe in. This is something that undermines everything that I believe about America. I ask my colleagues to oppose the dairy compact because this is just the northeast now, but I have a map here of those areas that want to go into dairy compacts. It includes just about every State in the country that is not a producer of dairy over and above their own needs. It includes everything other than just about Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, California, other large dairy producing States. Again, I go back to my examples of cars outside of Michigan, citrus outside of Florida, movies outside of California. What if one decided that one cannot do financing, we put a wall around New York and say all of the financing outside of New York has to be self-sufficient, and, therefore, New York can only finance New York. Do my colleagues know what would happen to Manhattan Island that could only finance loans that were being used on Manhattan Island? That is what kind of an effect this is having on Minnesota and Wisconsin and our other natural dairy States. As the new republic says, this is a situation where we are penalizing those areas that are most suited to dairy farming. They received the lowest payments for their milk; and those from the least efficient regions received the highest. The system, by design, punishes the efficient farmers and rewards inefficient ones. This is not the way that America becomes strong and stays strong. I urge our Members to vote against the dairy compact. I urge voters to contact their legislators and express their views on this very important subject.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I would just say that we are going to be debating foreign trade and giving our President trade promotion authority coming up here very soon. We know, many of us know the benefits that we receive from trade. Classic economics would teach us that, if we can do something better than someone else, and we each do what we do best, we all benefit. We all benefit from having lower cost of goods. We all benefit from higher employment, higher income levels. The increased prosperity around the world has really sprung from countries opening up their markets and each focusing on what they do best. If foreign trade is so beneficial to the world, if opening up markets with other countries is so beneficial to us, why should we have open markets with Europe, with Asia, if we cannot even have open markets with Vermont? Again, I have to go back to what you have said. When you tell people about this, they cannot believe it. We are used to being pitted against each other when the Packers play the Vikings, and we are used to having our rivalries; but we all come together when it comes to singing that national anthem at the beginning of our games. This does in a nonsportsman-like fashion pit one region of the country against the other in a very unfair way that undermines one region's strength and subsidizes another region that does not have those natural strengths when in fact they have natural strengths that are still benefiting them, but they are not letting us benefit from our natural strengths. Again, this is something that I implore our colleagues to do everything they can to oppose and certainly we will continue to try to spread the message across the land, that this is something that is un- American and should not be supported.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. I will just close by saying the gentleman has talked about the broader sense of consumers, how this is hurting consumers. But this is an example, an unprecedented example of the tyranny of a minority by the majority. Those who believe in our government, those who believe in civil liberties should not idly look aside and watch where one region of the country, just because we have fewer congressional votes here in the upper Midwest, can be penalized by another area of the country without really repute. Again I must emphasize as I began and leave as I began, when I talked about no other case is there where a State compact has been a allowed to create the cartel, the OPEC that you opened with and have price-fixing and get away with it. This sets a very bad precedent for any number of other things that can come to a State near you and hurt your local economy, hurt your consumers and undermine the very freedoms and civil liberties upon which this country was based and is based. Again, I thank my colleague from Wisconsin for the leadership that he has taken on this issue. I pledge to work with him and our other colleagues around the country that believe very strongly that this is wrong, that this ought to be opposed. We implore our listeners and our fellow colleagues to really dig in and understand this and really understand how this is undermining America.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Dakota for all his good efforts and for yielding to me. We look forward to working together to improve the farm bill for our farmers in southwest Minnesota. I also thank the references to growing demand by tapping the energy market. I often tease groups of farmers that I am with that we all seem to be well enough fed in southern Minnesota, at least in most parts of our State, and we have room to go in terms of feeding the world and feeding our country. But we have our best opportunity for growing demand in our energy markets. I am just still very pleased with the President's decision to deny California to waiver from their Clean Air Act and know in my recent conversations over the weekend with farmers across our district and with people that work with ethanol plants, that is going to result in a great boon to our farmers throughout the country. This is something, in the case of ethanol, that is a win-win-win situation. It is win in that it helps us create a renewable and domestic source of energy, something that we are in great need of today. It helps us with the environment by helping gas burn cleaner. It helps us provide jobs to many of our local communities. I have six ethanol plants throughout our district. It helps as well very much with the growing demand for our products. There is that. There is biodiesel we will be working on and certainly opening up markets, as the gentleman from South Dakota referred to. These are all not necessarily parts of our farm bill, but something that we in the Committee on Agriculture are fighting hard to make sure we advance. In the end, they result in more flexibility to do things with the farm bill because they naturally increase the price of products. But our farm bill needs to be focused on making sure that we have countercyclical payments to help our farmers in times of need as we clearly have today, and coming up with a program that gives them better support than they currently have; also, making sure that we have a strong insurance program and expanding our conservation efforts to make sure that we are nurturing the environment at the same time that we are growing the food to feed the world. Finally, in rural development, and I was pleased to be able to award two rural development grants in our district to help increase value- added farmer-owned production. So those are the things we will be focusing on. But I, too, was disappointed in the House Committee on Agriculture's recent votes to reduce supplemental aid to farmers in the new farm package to $5.5 billion. I opposed the amendment offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) to reduce that supplemental aid and supported the proposal of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Combest), our committee Chair, to provide $6.5 billion of funding. Our farmers are struggling, and we need to provide them with the aid they need. I voted for the final passage because we need to give them support. I hear that over and over as I am out in the district. But we are at a time when our prices remain low. We have had very poor planting conditions in our part of the country, and it is likely to reduce our yields. Our production costs are higher than they have been with the increased cost of energy. So this is really not the time to reduce the funding that the farmers have historically received during these times of need. I hope this is a first step in progress that we can make to continue to assist our farmers. We do need to move forward on a fast timetable on passing the farm, a new farm bill this year. I am very pleased that the House is moving forward on that. I am working together with the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry), and I received over 90 signatures from my fellow colleagues here in the House to encourage that both bodies move forward on a pace to get the farm bill done this year. Our farmers have waited long enough. We have ideas for needed relief. We need to move forward on them. We have the budget flexibility. It is time to write the farm bill this year. Besides, I think we would all prefer, our farmers would prefer and deserve that we focus on policy this year rather than politics next year. With that, I look forward to working with the gentleman from South Dakota.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota for yielding to me. I am happy to be here and working on the Committee on Agriculture. I want to applaud the decision that the EPA and the administration has made to stand up for rural America and for our environment and for rural communities. This is a decision that is very important to me. I have spoken quite a bit on this. The gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) and I wrote the President a letter earlier in the year encouraging him to make this decision, as we had written President Clinton before him. When I was at the White House for lunch for the 100-day celebration, I had an opportunity to say just one good thing to President Bush, and that was to encourage him to make the decision we are making here today. I have taken every opportunity I can, whether it be talking to President Bush's staff or to the Secretary or to other people in the administration, to encourage this decision. That is why I am so pleased. I have gone around my district in southwest Minnesota for the last several weeks. I have had six agriculture forums. I have collected over 250 letters at those forums from our constituents that have been addressed to President Bush encouraging this decision, so there has been a groundswell of support for this decision. No one is more pleased than I. As the gentleman said, the reason is because I do come from a business background. In my business background, whenever I have been faced with prices that are too low, my response has always been, how do we grow demand? As I look around our country, we all seem to be well- fed. We are probably not going to eat a whole lot more, so one of the best ways for us to grow demand for our country, for our country's products in agriculture, is to tap into the energy market. This clearly does that. If we look at that, one of the best things this does is it grows our domestic energy supply. Ethanol is both renewable and it is domestic. As we grapple with how do we deal with the tight energy supplies in this country, this is something that is very important to us. It was interesting to me to read an article in the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago that talked about one of the reasons why gasoline prices were going up so high was because the alternative to ethanol, MTBE, which has been found harmful to drinking water, was made out of natural gas, and given the shortage of natural gas, that was driving up the price of our gasoline. So this is ultimately going to help to keep our gasoline prices lower and take demand away from important resources like natural gas that are important for heating our homes in the upper Midwest, as well as providing our fertilizer for corn that we get the ethanol from. So for many, many reasons, this is a great thing. It is a win-win-win-win situation. It is a win for the supply of energy, for one. The second thing is in the environment. This is a great thing for the environment. Not only does it take MTBE out of production, which has been found to be harmful to the drinking water, but it helps gas burn cleaner. We did not have to be paying attention that much in high school science class to know that we cannot start a fire without having oxygen, and if we put a match inside a closed jar, sooner or later it is going to run out. By injecting oxygen into gasoline, which ethanol does, it helps that gas burn cleaner. It helps us deal with the air pollution and global warming and all those other things. So that is the second major reason why this is a very, very positive development for the environment. A third reason why it is positive is because this creates jobs in our local communities. We in Minnesota have 15 ethanol plants. Twelve of those are farmer-owned and have about 9,000 farmer investors. Six of those are in my district. I visited all of them several times. As the gentleman mentioned, they have expanded recently, and I think several of the other ones are considering expansion, plants in Winthrop and in Bingham Lake, towns we have never heard of, but towns where these jobs that are brought into those communities are very important. They are growing quality jobs and they are growing this production of ethanol to meet the increased demand that we see from a decision such as this. So this is very important to get jobs in the rural communities and help those communities thrive. Finally, it is important for how it increases our demand for our products, for our corn products and all of our other agricultural products. The more demand for corn there is, the better off it is for all products. I had a forum. At one of the forums, they put up the price of corn, whether it was $1.60 or whatever in a local area. The farmer circled the 0 and said, ``It does not make any difference if this is 160 or 161. If you change the 6 to the 7, it is something we talk about in the coffee shops. But what we really need to do is to change the number to the left of the decimal point. That is what we really need to do for agriculture to make it thrive and succeed.'' And for those that are one of these 87-50 ethanol farmer investors, the amount of dividends that they have gotten back with the high price of gasoline and the low price of corn has really added a digit to the left side of the decimal point for the corn that they have produced. These are the types of opportunities. The gentleman mentioned value-added production. These are absolutely critical and are putting capital dollars back into our communities for them to continue to invest in more value-added production. So whether you are talking adding to our energy supply, improving the environment, helping our local rural communities have the quality jobs, or growing the demand for our productions so that they can get better prices, this is absolutely a very positive decision that will be one of the short list of decisions that we say the Bush administration has done great things for rural America. And I am just proud to be serving under this President and very pleased that we have this decision today, and I thank the gentleman for the time and thank the gentleman for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), you are absolutely right on all of the benefits that this has from reducing our dependence on foreign oil, as well as the environment. We are very, very pleased with the result here today, but the gentleman and I both being from Minnesota, we never settle for what we have achieved today. We are always looking for where we can take it to the next step. Our great State of Minnesota has been a leader on biofuels. We have just about all the gasoline sold in Minnesota with a 10 percent blend. And as the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) said, any car can consume gasoline with a 10 percent blend. But we are also a leader when it comes to E-85, 85 percent ethanol blend, and vehicles like my Dodge Grand Caravan that I drive and several Ford vehicles and several vehicles from other makes can use this product where you have 85 percent blend of ethanol, and the benefits that we have been talking about for the last hour, about the benefits of the environment, the benefits to increasing our energy supply are equally as important there. What we found is that over time as we have invested in these technologies, we get better and better at making ethanol. We find more and more uses for the by-products that drives down the overall costs that makes it increasingly more competitive. I am confident that that will be the case in the future. We have also been a leader on another very significant biofuel in the form of biodiesel; what people do not really realize about our President is that he has taken some bold moves for the environment. This being one. Another very bold move that he did was to significantly reduce the amount of sulfur in diesel, about a 95 percent reduction in the sulfur in diesel and by taking sulfur out of diesel, you significantly reduce its lubricity. One of the ways to increase lubricity and put that back in is through biodiesel. We have had a very active discussion in Minnesota on trying to be a forward State on biodiesel as well, and I am hopeful that discussion continues on. I think we can do the same things with biodiesel that we have done with ethanol. Finally, I just want to go back to one very simple example about how good this is for your environment. As I go around into our ethanol plants, I have oftentimes challenged those that make MTBE, that I will drink some ethanol if you will drink some MTBE. MTBE would be very harmful for, other than given that it is basically 100 percent alcohol, you can drink our good ethanol. Mr. Speaker, I have been trying to come up with something, because our former Senator Rudy Boshwitz had his milk stand at the Minnesota State Fair where he had flavored milk, strawberry milk and blueberry milk, and trying to come up with something else. So we toyed for a very short period of time having a taste test like the Pepsi-Coke test, where you would come out to the farm feast, you come out to the State Fair, and you could taste your ethanol versus your biodiesel. Given that we probably would be killing some and making the rest intoxicated, we gave up on that idea very quickly, but it just really highlights the fact that this is something that is going to be good for the environment. It is not going to have any side effects. It is the type of thing that we ought to be promoting, and it is the type of thing that we ought to be applauding the administration as we are here today for making the decision that we did.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to honor a Minnesotan whose life work has been enjoyed by children, both young and old, for decades, cartoonist Charles Schulz. Schulz is best known for creating the most successful comic strip ever, the lovable Peanuts comic strip. Since Peanuts was first published in October of 1950, literally millions of people all over the world have been entertained by Schulz. I myself have fond childhood memories of reading about the adventures of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, Pigpen and the whole Peanuts gang. I would like to thank Charles Schulz for his contributions to society and the joy and the laughter that he has brought to us all. Schulz is being honored here today at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda where he will be posthumously presented with a gold medal on behalf of Congress. As a tribute, I would like to say, ``You're a good man, Charles Schulz.''

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to congratulate James Todd Rather of Fairmont, Minnesota. Todd will be in Washington this week to receive the Star of Life award. The Stars of Life is an American Ambulance Association program to honor dedicated professionals in the ambulance service industry. Todd, who is a registered paramedic and is a team captain for Fairmont Gold Cross Ambulance Services, has been selected as one of three EMS professionals in Minnesota to receive this honor. EMS providers are the safety net of the health care system. In rural areas, like the Minnesota district I represent, where physicians and other health care providers do not exist in every community, EMS provides the public their only access point to quality health care. That is why I introduced H.R. 1353, the Sustaining Access to Vital Emergency Medical Services Act to help our EMS providers. Every day, EMTs and paramedics are heroes in their communities. I want to thank Todd for his commitment to serving his community. Mr. Speaker, it is people like Todd Rather who give selflessly of themselves that make our communities a better place to live.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak today about the floods that have been wreaking havoc in southwest Minnesota and other areas around the country. A week ago, I was in Montevideo and in Granite Falls with Governor Ventura, and I was saddened by the devastation and flooding that nature can cause; but I was uplifted by the spirit of volunteers and workers that came to help their communities with such a disaster. I wanted to take this time to thank those communities and the leaders and the many youth who gave so much work and worked so hard to help their neighbors during this time of need: Carver County and Kevin Carrolls; Chaska and Mayor Bob Roepke; Granite Falls and Mayor Dave Smiglewski and Bill Lavin; Montevideo and Mayor Jim Curtis and Steve Jones; New Ulm and Mayor Arnolf Koelpin and Gary Gleisner; Redwood Falls and Mayor Sara Triplett and Jeff Weldon; Shakopee and Mayor Jon Brekke and Mark McNeill; St. Peter and Todd Prafke and Jerry Hawbaker; and to all the others who have worked so hard to help their communities. We applaud their efforts and we thank them.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise in support of H.R. 496, the Independent Telecommunications Enhancement Act of 2001. H.R. 496 is good for southwest Minnesota because it helps our small and mid-sized telephone companies by reducing the regulatory burden that has been put upon them. One of my goals in Congress is to help our rural communities by improving their rural telecommunications infrastructure. I believe that this bill, introduced by the gentlewoman from Wyoming, who says she is from the most rural State, while I profess to be from the most rural district in the country, that this will help us meet the goal by reducing government regulations on smaller phone companies and allowing them to focus their efforts instead on providing quality and competitive service to rural America instead of dealing with burdensome regulations. By allowing companies to focus on improving our communities by deploying new services and investing in infrastructure instead of complying with burdensome regulations, more residents in southwest Minnesota and in Wyoming will have access to telecommunication services that their friends and families in bigger cities oftentimes already have. I believe this is a step in the right direction towards closing the digital divide that we face here in America, and I also believe that by improving rural telecommunications services and infrastructure that we can make our rural areas more attractive to new and existing businesses. I thank the chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from Wyoming for putting this forward, and I look forward to voting for it.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 54 I was inadvertently detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the men and women of America who help feed the world. This week is National Agriculture Week, and today is Ag Day. It is a time when we take a moment to pay tribute to those that work the land to feed our world. For many of the constituents in my district, it is a very special day. Southwest Minnesota is a national leader in producing soybeans, corn, sugar, turkeys, pork, and dairy products. The efficiency of U.S. farmers is a benefit to all Americans. American families spend approximately 9 percent of their income on food, compared to 11 percent in the United Kingdom, 17 percent in Japan and 53 percent in India. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues not to forget the farmer among all of the other pressing issues of the day. Agriculture is a vital link to the success of our Nation, and we must help our farmers by working to grow demand for their products.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I often joke that the only thing I hate worse than taxes is burdensome regulations. But our small businesses spend at least 1 billion hours a year filling out government forms. As a businessman myself, I understand the impact that this has on business. Every hour that is really spent on filling out this needless paperwork is an hour that our small business owners could use to grow their business. In a rural district such as mine, almost all of our businesses are small, and this has a very profound effect. Small businesses need to thrive in order for our communities to prosper in rural America. The Small Business Paperwork Relief Act that we just passed I hope is the beginning of a new era to be friendly to small business. When we support rural small business we support rural hospitals, we support rural schools, and we support the rural infrastructure that is necessary for our communities to prosper. That is why this Kennedy was very happy to vote for the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act.

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota

Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the President included maximum debt reduction, strengthening Social Security and Medicare and a $1 trillion budget reserve to pay for things that may come up, like agriculture. I am also very pleased that he is strengthening our families by lifting the burden of death tax that makes it hard to pass on the farm or family business to the next generation, addressing the marriage penalty and doubling the per-child tax credit. But today we vote on an across-the-board tax relief for our families. As I travel around southwest Minnesota talking to families and farmers and small businesses, they tell me that we need to give the economy a boost right now to keep it moving in the right direction. This will provide real money that families can use to pay down credit card debt or to spend a little less time working for the government and a little more time with their own families. It is because of this that this Kennedy will be voting for across- the-board tax relief today.