Cynthia Lummis

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I would note that over the last 2 days we have heard how ag credit and rural housing have had deep cuts in this bill, and yet now we have an amendment that would cut more from them and would impart those funds on a program that between fiscal year 2004 and the current fiscal year has experienced a net budget authority increase of $2 billion, a 121 percent increase, and over the same time period, direct appropriations increases of over $1 billion, or 75 percent. Implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 would require an additional $1.4 billion in new budget authority. If the President's budget request were adopted, the result would be a 156 percent increase for FDA since 2004. This level of spending is unsustainable. While the recommended funding level for FDA in this bill is an 11.5 percent decrease below the amount provided in the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution, the subcommittee's overall allocation was reduced by 13.4 percent. Hence, this program suffered a smaller reduction than other programs within the budget. Once again, with these massive increases in budget authority and in actual spending through direct appropriations over the time period 2004 and the current fiscal year, Mr. Chairman, and given the fact that ag credit and rural housing have already taken the types of deep cuts that are referenced in the rest of the bill, I urge my colleagues to defeat the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I rise with great temerity in opposition to the amendment by the great gentleman from Michigan.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Now I am not going to withdraw the amendment. I will ask for a vote.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I am asking for unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Virginia inadvertently misrepresented the terms of this amendment. They only applied to the fee-for-service component. With that, Mr. Chairman----

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would remove the restriction only on the fee-for-service horse meat inspection portion. Since fiscal year 2006, Congress has prohibited the use of Federal funds to inspect horses. However, the USDA allowed for a fee-for- service program for mandatory inspection of horses destined for food until 2008, when Congress prohibited the program through an appropriations rider. Before these bans, horse processing was a $65 million a year industry and owners could receive about $400 to $800 when selling a horse. I am offering this amendment because owners should have the option of selling their horse for processing under their personal property rights. It is not the Federal Government's role to ban this option. The decision to allow for processing should be made by the States. The Senate Committee on Appropriations has directed GAO to examine the effects of this ban on the welfare of horses and on the agriculture industry. This report was expected by March 1 of 2010. Over a full year later, we still have yet to be delivered a final report from GAO, but expect one within weeks of this debate. It is important that this analysis be considered when determining whether to consider this ban. In particular, the GAO was asked to examine how many horses are now being shipped to Mexico and Canada for slaughter, which outside analysis has confirmed is increasing. With the increased exporting of animals comes the concern of longer transportation times to slaughter and reduced inspections by USDA of travel conditions. USDA has no authority to ensure humane treatment once horses cross the border to Mexico or Canada, and there is no reason to believe horses are receiving better treatment by continuing this ban. Additionally, there continue to be reports of increased animal abuse during the reduced options for unwanted horses. I can assure you this is true in my home State of Wyoming. Recently, 100 horses have been seized from a western Wyoming ranch where they were being starved and had to be transported to the eastern side of the State to the State's Cheyenne stockyards. While the state veterinarian is caring for the animals currently, the options for selling these horses are limited. There is just no place to send unwanted horses, and neglect will continue to rise across the country without a viable alternative. In fact, the Wyoming legislature this year made it a crime to release a horse on to public lands. Now, the reason people do that is because there is no other way to get rid of an unwanted horse. There is no opportunity to sell them into this meat market, so people are turning them loose with the feral horses, the wild horses, further exacerbating the Federal wild horse problem. Congress needs to examine these concerns, and the GAO report should provide us the information needed to make an educated decision on this matter. Now, I plan to withdraw my amendment after discussing this issue, but would like to provide my colleagues with the opportunity to present their States' concerns with this ban and to ensure moving forward we examine the GAO report before finalizing any appropriations language for fiscal year 2012. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to strike the last word.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I yield to the gentleman from Utah.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Reclaiming my time from the gentleman, the crisis is worse than the people realize, and, in fact, in some respects, the people are way ahead of us on this, which is why the people of this country chose to elect fiscal conservatives to run this House during the current Congress, and we presented to the American people what we intended to do, which is cut spending. We told the American people we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. The American people chose to give my party the opportunity to lead and to exhibit the fiscal restraint that the American people voted for in the last election. We are now exercising that fiscal restraint in a way that preserves 87 percent of the funding level of the WIC program that is currently being alleged that we are destroying. Now, there are millions and millions of Americans who are functioning in this recession on 87 percent of what they used to make. In fact, we know that small businesses all over this country who are the drivers of our economy, the creators of jobs, are functioning on far less than 87 percent of what they used to make. It is time for this House to exercise this fiscal restraint in a way that is sensitive to the needs of the people in this country, that we told the American people in November we would do. I yield back the balance of my time. Announcement by the Acting Chair

Mrs. LUMMIS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle did not produce a budget. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle did not raise taxes on the mineral industry as they now assert we should. My colleagues ran this House for 6 years. My colleagues ran this House with a Democratic President and a Democratic U.S. Senate. The things of which they argue are the fixes are things you did not do when you were in control of all three: the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Without a budget, with the Keynesian philosophy that you attempted to implement, and it was worth a try but it failed, the massive increases in spending, in social programs, in entitlement programs, the massive increase in spending that amounts to ObamaCare, the massive stimulus bill, the massive efforts that you made, all the time asserting that you had something called Pay-As-You-Go, PAYGO, when, in fact, there were more exceptions to PAYGO than the rule ever provided. You took half a trillion dollars out of Medicare. You destroyed Medicare. You destroyed it.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, our committee is only able to look at discretionary spending. We cannot look at mandatory spending, and we cannot look at programs that are subject to the 5-year farm bill, such as subsidies for farmers. I think subsidies for farmers can go by the wayside, and I hope that when the Ag Committee meets to restructure the 5-year farm bill that they will do away with farmer subsidies. I think it is ridiculous that we are paying cotton growers subsidies in this country that violate the World Trade Organization to an extent that we then have to subsidize Brazilian cotton growers in order to rectify our violation of the WTO. That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. I wish we could have addressed that in this bill. I wish we could have addressed the categorical eligibility that is available. Once you qualify for one type of Federal program, you're eligible for all of them whether you need them or not. I wish we could address how much money people get on earned income tax credits. I wish we could make sure that 100 percent of the people in this country paid a little bit of tax and that the rich people paid a lot more. None of that is true, and none of that is within the purview of the Appropriations Committee with regard to discretionary spending. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. In reclaiming my time, I do not believe that cotton farmers in either the United States or Brazil are more important than WIC Program participants.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, the speakers have chosen to cut $562 million out of WIC, which would have carried forward into this year, and this year would have carried forward into next year. That's because the WIC Program has a 2-year carryover. So, when the previous speakers voted to cut WIC by $562 million, they truly were cutting money that could have been available now. The reason they chose to cut that is they found a higher priority expenditure than WIC, and when they made that choice, they took that money out of the program, money which could have been available now. They did that based on real numbers of WIC participation, not on estimates. They did it on real numbers, and the real numbers showed that WIC participation was in decline. We are now looking at about 8.3 million per month in WIC participation with about 9 million per month fundable via contingency. We are looking at funding WIC at 87 percent of what it has been. We're not looking at decimating it. We're not looking, like some people have said on the other side, at levels that will cause children to go hungry or to starve, as one of the people said on the other side of the aisle. We're funding it at 87 percent of the level it has been. In addition, there are State food programs. There are county food programs. There are city food programs. There are religious organization food programs. There is the Salvation Army--501(c)(3)-type programs--neighborhood programs, Meals on Wheels programs, food banks; and there are goodhearted, wonderful Americans who help their neighbors in need. This is an adequate budget in tough economic times. In addition, as I said earlier, we are funding a net increase in food programs because we are increasing the amount of money that will go to food stamps and school lunches.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman. Madam Chair, this is my third year in this Congress. During my first 2 years, the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, and during that time the subsidies or tax loopholes for the rich, for the oil companies, for these bailouts of Wall Street were going on just like they allege they are now. And did they do anything about it when they controlled the entire government? No. Nope. They didn't do anything. Instead, they created massive new entitlement programs. Instead, they did TARP part two without accounting for part one. They did massive bailouts of the auto industry. They created huge new health programs. They gave massive blank checks to bureaucrats. They increased spending at the EPA, one agency, by 39 percent in 1 year. It is incredible. They taxed, they spent, yet they didn't go after the very people that today they allege are the source of the problem. Now, when the Republicans were elected in the House to do what the American people felt needed to be done, which is to grapple with spending first, spending being the problem in our country, amassing a huge amount of debt, deficits, borrowing money from foreign countries, risking our own credit rating, risking our own ability to borrow money, risking the value of our currency, now they are alleging we are addressing the wrong targets. Madam Chair, this very budget we are debating today increases spending for food programs. It increases funding for both food stamps and school lunch. It increases it more than we are cutting spending for WIC and other programs. It increases spending for the human needs that are legitimate for the people in this country by over one-quarter of a billion dollars. Madam Chair, I allege that this is a responsible budget, that we are beginning to get off that unsustainable path of spending that even the President acknowledges and get back on a path where we can live more reasonably, where we can protect our currency, where we can protect our job market, where we can protect our tax structure and improve it in a way that makes America strong for our grandchildren.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment not because it is unworthy, but because I believe that there are funds elsewhere in the bill that could be used to cover the services and research that the gentleman requests. I refer the gentleman to page 10, the National Institute of Food and Agricultural Research and Education Activities. Those activities include: for ag experiment stations, $600,800,000; for grants payable to eligible institutions, $48 million, provided that each institution receives no less than $1 million; for special grants, $1.2 million; for competitive grants for integrated pest management and biological control, $14 million; for competitive grants, $229.5 million to remain available until expended. This is sloshing with research dollars, sloshing. I think there's plenty in this bill to cover the worthy research that the gentleman has requested, so I urge my colleagues to defeat the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to focus on what this bill does and what it does not do. First of all, it increases spending because mandatory programs are growing. The mandatory programs, like SNAP and Child Nutrition, are growing so rapidly that they exceed the cuts in the discretionary programs in this bill. So while my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are talking about the dreadful calamity associated with the cuts in this bill, the fact of the matter is food programs get more money under this bill, and that's because they are mandatory programs. The committee has no control over them. The only thing we have control over are the discretionary programs. SNAP is projected to grow almost $6 billion, and Child Nutrition is projected to cost an additional $1.45 billion. Now, those and other mandatory spending add up to an additional $282 million over the costs of fiscal year 2012. So to call this a cut is not acknowledging the additional spending that is mandatory and that is in the SNAP program and the Child Nutrition Program. Now, we, as Members of Congress, who are facing 1.2, 1.3 trillion more dollars in spending every year than we take in and are racking up 14, soon to be more, trillion dollars in debt, this year we have now exceeded, in our national debt, the entire GDP of this country for 1 year. We cannot go on like this. We're destroying the country with spending. That's the moral imperative that we're discussing today. Consequently, let's keep our eye on the ball. We're not destroying spending for people in need. We're actually increasing it, $6 billion for SNAP and almost $1.5 billion for Child Nutrition. We've saved it in other areas. The Agriculture Committee's budget includes a variety of priorities, including traditional agriculture spending like research, animal and plant health and conservation, nutrition, food aid and safety, rural development, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Spreading funding across this spectrum is a balancing act, and I would like to thank Chairman Kingston for his leadership on this bill.