Jim McGovern

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself 5 seconds. My colleague from California keeps on saying that the Boehner bill was bipartisan. I'll remind him that not one single Democrat voted for that bill because Democrats do not want to decimate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. At this time, I would like to yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself 15 seconds. Madam Speaker, make no mistake about it. From day one, this Republican majority has put Medicare on the chopping block. And the Boehner proposal would decimate Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security as we know it. At this point, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I implore rational Republicans to join Democrats in passing the Reid bill. I appeal to your sense of responsibility, to your sense of duty, to your country. Have the courage of your convictions to do what's right. Don't be paralyzed by the threats and intimidating tactics of the Tea Party or other extreme groups. Stand up to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from California, the Democratic leader, and a defender of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, Nancy Pelosi.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself 10 seconds, Madam Speaker, just to remind the gentlelady that she has voted time and time and time again to decimate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and we're not going to stand by and let them do that. At this point I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. McGOVERN. Does this mean that Speaker Boehner's bill to raise the debt limit and destroy Medicare would have failed if it were considered under suspension of the rules yesterday?

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this closed martial law rule. Today is a sad, sad day. In just a few days, the process in this House has completely devolved. It's shameful. We've gone from open rules to closed rules to same-day martial law rule all because a few extreme Members of the House refuse to do the right thing. The rule today paves the way for a bill today that is even a worse bill than the one the Republicans were forced to pull from the floor yesterday. That's not coming together, Madam Speaker. It's pushing us further and further apart. These last few days have not been about trying to find a united solution. These last few days and last few weeks have been about trying to unite the House Republicans. It has been wasted opportunities. For weeks and weeks and weeks my Republican friends have walked away from a balanced, fair, and bipartisan approach allowing the United States to pay its bills. They've walked away from a balanced, fair, and bipartisan approach to addressing the Nation's long-term fiscal challenges. Democrats have been willing over and over and over again to move forward on such an approach. To be honest, I'm not thrilled with some of the things that President Obama has put on the table. But I'm willing to consider them in order to get past this crisis. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership of this House is unwilling to meet us halfway. They're not even willing to meet us a tenth of the way. All we're asking for, and I think all the American people are asking for, is a balanced approach. All we're asking for is for everyone to chip in to solve this problem. I'll say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, if you're going to ask seniors to pay more for their Medicare, if you're going to cut vital investments in education, transportation, medical research, and other programs, then the least you can do is ask the various wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. How in the world can my friends on the other side of the aisle justify slashing Medicare while they refuse to ask Big Oil and gas companies or corporate jet owners or hedge fund managers to give up their unnecessary and unjustified taxpayer subsidies. But that's their position, Madam Speaker, not asking billionaires to pay a little bit more but asking middle class families to pay a lot more. It's reckless, it's wrong, it's unfair. And I for one will not go along with it. My friend from Texas (Mr. Sessions) says we have to make tough choices. I agree, we have to make tough choices. But why do you always have to be tough on working families or on poor people or on senior citizens? They didn't create this economic crisis. We're in this mess because of unpaid-for tax cuts, mostly for wealthy people; we're in this mess because of two wars that are not paid for that are on our credit card; we're in this mess because of a prescription drug bill that wasn't paid for. I would say to my colleagues, enough of the press releases, enough of the theatrics, enough of the political stunts. I urge you to reject this martial law rule and get back to the negotiating table and avert an economic crisis.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, my colleague, Mr. Lynch.

Mr. McGOVERN. At this time, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Tonko.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert into the Record a recent New York Times editorial entitled ``The Republican Wreckage.'' [From The New York Times, July 25, 2011] The Republican Wreckage House Republicans have lost sight of the country's welfare. It's hard to conclude anything else from their latest actions, including the House speaker's dismissal of President Obama's plea for compromise Monday night. They have largely succeeded in their campaign to ransom America's economy for the biggest spending cuts in a generation. They have warped an exercise in paying off current debt into an argument about future spending. Yet, when they win another concession, they walk away. This increasingly reckless game has pushed the nation to the brink of ruinous default. The Republicans have dimmed the futures of millions of jobless Americans, whose hopes for work grow more out of reach as government job programs are cut and interest rates begin to rise. They have made the federal government a laughingstock around the globe. In a scathing prime-time television address Monday night, President Obama stepped off the sidelines to tell Americans the House Republicans were threatening a ``deep economic crisis'' that could send interest rates skyrocketing and hold up Social Security and veterans' checks. By insisting on a single-minded approach and refusing to negotiate, he said, Republicans were violating the country's founding principle of compromise. ``How can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries?'' he said, invoking Ronald Reagan's effort to make everyone pay a fair share and pointing out that his immediate predecessors had to ask for debt-ceiling increases under rules invented by Congress. He urged viewers to demand compromise. ``The entire world is watching,'' he said. Mr. Obama denounced House Speaker John Boehner's proposal to make cuts only, now, and raise the debt ceiling briefly, but he embraced the proposal made over the weekend by the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, which gave Republicans virtually everything they said they wanted when they ignited this artificial crisis: $2.7 trillion from government spending over the next decade, with no revenue increases. It is, in fact, an awful plan, which cuts spending far too deeply at a time when the government should be summoning all its resources to solve the real economic problem of unemployment. It asks for absolutely no sacrifice from those who have prospered immensely as economic inequality has grown. Mr. Reid's proposal does at least protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And about half of its savings comes from the winding down of two wars, which naturally has drawn Republican opposition. (Though Republicans counted the same savings in their budgets.) Mr. Boehner will not accept this as the last-ditch surrender that it is. The speaker, who followed Mr. Obama on TV with about five minutes of hoary talking points clearly written before the president spoke, is insisting on a plan that raises the debt ceiling until early next year and demands another vote on a balanced-budget amendment, rejected by the Senate last week. The result would be to stage this same debate over again in an election year. Never mind that this would almost certainly result in an immediate downgrade of the government's credit. We agreed strongly when Mr. Obama said Americans should be ``offended'' by this display and that they ``may have voted for divided government but they didn't vote for a dysfunctional government.'' It's hard not to conclude now that dysfunction is the Republicans' goal--even if the cost is unthinkable. I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McGOVERN. Robert Greenstein, the president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says that if enacted, the Boehner bill could well produce the greatest poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern history. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities July 25, 2011. Statement: Robert Greenstein, President, on House Speaker Boehner's New Budget Proposal The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of ``class warfare.'' If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history. This may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. The mathematics are inexorable. The Boehner plan calls for large cuts in discretionary programs of $1.2 trillion over the next ten years, and it then requires additional cuts that are large enough to produce another $1.8 trillion in savings to be enacted by the end of the year as a condition for raising the debt ceiling again at that time. The Boehner plan contains no tax increases. The entire $1.8 trillion would come from budget cuts. Because the first round of cuts will hit discretionary programs hard--through austere discretionary caps that Congress will struggle to meet-- discretionary cuts will largely or entirely be off the table when it comes to achieving the further $1.8 trillion in budget reductions. As a result, virtually all of that $1.8 trillion would come from entitlement programs. They would have to be cut more than $1.5 trillion in order to produce sufficient interest savings to achieve $1.8 trillion in total savings. To secure $1.5 trillion in entitlement savings over the next ten years would require draconian policy changes. Policymakers would essentially have three choices: 1) cut Social Security and Medicare benefits heavily for current retirees, something that all budget plans from both parties (including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan) have ruled out; 2) repeal the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansions while retaining its measures that cut Medicare payments and raise tax revenues, even though Republicans seek to repeal many of those measures as well; or 3) eviscerate the safety net for low-income children, parents, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. There is no other plausible way to get $1.5 trillion in entitlement cuts in the next ten years. The evidence for this conclusion is abundant. The ``Gang of Six'' plan, with its very tough and controversial entitlement cuts, contains total entitlement reductions of $640 to $760 billion over the next ten years not counting Social Security, and $755 billion to $875 billion including Social Security. (That's before netting out $300 billion in entitlement costs that the plan includes for a permanent fix to the scheduled cuts in Medicare physician payments that Congress regularly cancels; with these costs netted out, the Gang of Six entitlement savings come to $455 to $575 billion.) The budget deal between President Obama and Speaker Boehner that fell apart last Friday, which included cuts in Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and Medicare benefits as well as an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, contained total entitlement cuts of $650 billion (under the last Obama offer) to $700 billion (under the last Boehner offer). The Ryan budget that the House passed in April contained no savings in Social Security over the next ten years and $279 billion in Medicare cuts. To be sure, the House-passed Ryan budget included much larger overall entitlement cuts over the next 10 years. But that was largely because it eviscerated the safety net and repealed health reform's coverage expansions. The Ryan plan included cuts in Medicaid and health reform of a remarkable $2.2 trillion, from severely slashing Medicaid and killing health reform's coverage expansions. The Ryan plan also included stunning cuts of $127 billion in the SNAP program (formerly known as food stamps) and $126 billion in Pell Grants and other student financial assistance. That House Republicans would likely seek to reach the Boehner budget's $1.8 trillion target in substantial part by cutting programs for the poorest and most vulnerable Americans is given strong credence by the ``Cut, Cap, and Balance'' bill that the House recently approval. That bill would establish global spending caps and enforce them with across-the-board budget cuts--exempting Medicare and Social Security from the across-the-board cuts while subjecting programs for the poor to the across-the-board axe. This would turn a quarter century of bipartisan budget legislation on its head; starting with the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law, all federal laws of the last 26 years that have set budget targets enforced by across-the-board cuts have exempted the core assistance programs for the poor from those cuts while including Medicare among programs subject to the cuts. This component of the ``Cut, Cap, and Balance'' bill strongly suggests that, especially in the face of an approaching election, House Republicans looking for entitlement cuts would heavily target means-tested programs for people of lesser means (and less political power). In short, the Boehner plan would force policymakers to choose among cutting the incomes and health benefits of ordinary retirees, repealing the guts of health reform and leaving an estimated 34 million more Americans uninsured, and savaging the safety net for the poor. It would do so even as it shielded all tax breaks, including the many lucrative tax breaks for the wealthiest and most powerful individuals and corporations. President Obama has said that, while we must reduce looming deficits, we must take a balanced approach. The Boehner proposal badly fails this test of basic decency. The President should veto the bill if it reaches his desk. Congress should find a fairer, more decent way to avoid a default. At this point I would like to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado, my colleague on the Rules Committee, Mr. Polis.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, to open debate, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished Democratic whip.

Mr. McGOVERN. Yes, I do.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Sutton).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New Mexico didn't yield.

Mr. McGOVERN. At this point, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado, a former member of the Rules Committee, and we miss him, Mr. Perlmutter.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield the gentleman 10 more seconds.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. I thank the gentlelady for yielding to me. I would like to insert into the Record at this time a letter from 53 United States Senators saying that they will not support the Boehner default plan. Mr. Speaker, this proposal that we are debating today is dead on arrival. We are wasting precious time. We are fast approaching a deadline that we need to address, and here we are, debating a bill that we know is going nowhere in the United States Senate. I would urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, enough of the theatrics. This is time for a grownup moment. This is time to act like adults, to work with the Senate, to work with the President, to come up with a bipartisan deal, and to get this job done. But let's understand why we are where we are. When Bill Clinton left office, we had a balanced budget. We had surpluses. When President Bush took over and the Republicans, what happened? Tax cuts, mostly for wealthy people that weren't paid for; a prescription drug bill that wasn't paid for; two wars that weren't paid for. And we end up in this terrible debt situation. And what do my friends propose as a way to get out of it? They propose a bill that would make drastic cuts in programs that benefit the poor and the most vulnerable in our country. What they propose is eviscerating Medicare and Social Security. They propose cutting education money so that our kids can afford to go to school. They propose balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class and the most vulnerable in this country. It is wrong. It is shameful. It is an outrage to bring a bill like this to the floor. And given the fact that we know it's going nowhere, this is just politics. Enough. I think the American people have had enough. They want us to get together to do our job, and I would urge my Republican colleagues to pull this bill from the floor and get serious about negotiating a real deal. U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, July 27, 2011. Speaker John Boehner, U.S. Capitol, H-232, Washington, DC. Dear Speaker Boehner: With five days until our nation faces an unprecedented financial crisis, we need to work together to ensure that our nation does not default on our obligations for the first time in our history. We heard that in your caucus you said the Senate will support your bill. We are writing to tell you that we will not support it, and give you the reasons why. A short-term extension like the one in your bill would put America at risk, along with every family and business in it. Your approach would force us once again to face the threat of default in five or six short months. Every day, another expert warns us that your short-term approach could be nearly as disastrous as a default and would lead to a downgrade in our credit rating. If our credit is downgraded, it would cost us billions of dollars more in interest payments on our existing debt and drive up our deficit. Even more worrisome, a downgrade would spike interest rates, making everything from mortgages, car loans and credit cards more expensive for families and businesses nationwide. In addition to risking a downgrade and catastrophic default, we are concerned that in five or six months, the House will once again hold the economy captive and refuse to avoid another default unless we accept unbalanced, deep cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security, without asking anything of the wealthiest Americans. We now have only five days left to act. The entire world is watching Congress. We need to do the right thing to solve this problem. We must work together to avoid a default the responsible way--not in a way that will do America more harm than good. Sincerely, Harry Reid; Richard J. Durbin; Charles E. Shumer; Patty Murray; Jeanne Shaheen; Ben Nelson; Bernard Sanders; Claire McCaskill; Mary L. Landrieu; John F. Kerry; Al Franken; Patrick J. Leahy; Christopher A. Coons; Barbara A. Mikulski; Barbara Boxer; Ron Wyden; Robert Menendez; Carl Levin; Sherrod Brown; Herb Kohl; Richard Blumenthal; Mark Begich; Michael F. Bennet; Thomas R. Carper; Frank R. Lautenberg; Dianne Feinstein; Max Baucus; Debbie Stabenow; Bill Nelson; Kirsten E. Gillibrand; Maria Cantwell; Kent Conrad; Mark R. Warner; Kay R. Hagan; Sheldon Whitehouse; Daniel K. Inouye; Daniel K. Akaka; Tim Johnson; Mark Udall; Joe Manchin III; Amy Klobuchar; Benjamin L. Cardin; Tom Udall; Joseph I. Lieberman; Jeff Bingaman; Jack Reed; Jon Tester; Jeff Merkley; Tom Harkin; Jim Webb; John D. Rockefeller IV; Mark L. Pryor; Robert P. Casey, Jr.

Mr. McGOVERN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. McGOVERN. I rise in strong opposition to this closed rule, to this closed process, and to the underlying bill. Mr. Speaker, I keep expecting lion tamers and acrobats to appear on the House floor. Because this process, under this Republican leadership, has become a complete circus. The underlying Boehner plan should be called the Republican Default Act. The rule allows the Republican leadership to bring a radical balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the House, but right now we have no idea what that amendment will look like. This is crazy. Our Founding Fathers spent weeks and weeks arguing over every clause, conjunction, and comma in the Constitution. But today, my Republican friends treat it as just another excuse for a partisan press release. And why are they doing this, Mr. Speaker? It's simple. Politics. The Speaker of the House made that clear in a radio interview. He argued that the reason the Republicans should support his radical plan to slash Medicare and Social Security and education and medical research is that ``Barack Obama hates it, Harry Reid hates it, Nancy Pelosi hates it.'' And yesterday, in a meeting of the Republican conference, their leadership tried to rally votes for this bill by playing a clip from the movie, ``The Town.'' The quote they used--and I guess this was supposed to be inspirational--was this: ``I need your help. I can't tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people.'' The problem is, Mr. Speaker, that the people they're going to hurt are senior citizens on Medicare and Social Security. They're going to hurt children who don't have enough to eat. They're going to hurt students trying to afford a college education. They're going to hurt the very people who can least afford to take the hit, all in the name of protecting tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Their approach is reckless. Their approach is wrong. Their approach is unfair. And I urge my colleagues to vote against this rule and against this bill.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, last week, the United Nations declared famine in Somalia and reported urgent needs in Ethiopia and Kenya. On our nightly TV news and in our daily papers, we are seeing the pictures of people dying, of children suffering from extreme malnutrition, and of mothers carrying their babies, walking over 100 miles in search of food and safe haven. Tens of thousands of people in Somalia have already died. The Horn of Africa is suffering a devastating drought, with this year being recorded in some locations as the driest or second driest year on record since 1951. The impact has been compounded by war, neglect and spiraling food prices. Currently, some 11.5 million people across east Africa urgently need food aid, medical supplies and care. More than 130,000 Somali refugees have left their country for refugee camps along the borders of Ethiopia and Kenya. They arrive exhausted and physically depleted. News reports estimate that about 1,300 Somali refugees arrive in northern Kenya every single day. They join already overcrowded camps, and stress the ability of the Kenyan Government and humanitarian agencies to provide food, water, emergency care, and shelter. Working with local partners and NGOs such as Doctors without Borders, Save the Children, and Italian Aid, UNICEF will be vaccinating hundreds of thousands of children. Dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition, these children, especially those under the age of 5, are particularly susceptible to the measles, polio, diarrhea, and pneumonia. To date, in fiscal year 2011, the United States has provided over $450 million in humanitarian aid to the Horn of Africa through USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Food for Peace program, along with refugee assistance from the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. But much more needs to be done. The next 3 to 6 months will be critical. The drought is expected to worsen, at least through the end of the year, and then we will wait to see what happens during the next cycle of rains. Will communities be able to recover? Will small farmers be able to plant new crops or will heavy rains produce floods that drive communities deeper into poverty? My colleagues need to understand, however, that the current crisis, as terrible as it is, could have been much worse. There is good news amongst so much tragedy. The last time a drought of this magnitude hit Ethiopia, over 14 million people faced starvation. This time, about 4.5 million Ethiopians are in need of emergency aid. The difference? Since 2005, the United States and other donors have made significant investments in Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program. I saw firsthand several of these programs in 2007. They helped small farmers and poor communities diversify the crops they planted, broaden their sources of income, create local markets, better manage their water resources, and increase the nutritional content of their own diets and those of their children. This has enabled over 7.5 million Ethiopians to withstand the worst effects of the current drought. These families and communities are not part of the 4.5 million Ethiopians who require urgent humanitarian aid. Mr. Speaker, these programs work. They were models for Feed the Future, our current global program to promote sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition. It's how you end global hunger, Mr. Speaker. It's the difference between needing to help rescue 4 million people rather than 14 million people. It's also the difference between investing $6 per person each year so they become more food secure and resilient to disasters--or having to invest $250 per person to deliver emergency relief that only covers 3 to 4 months. It's the smart way to invest our development resources. Mr. Speaker, this is why I am so appalled by what happened yesterday in the markup of the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill. Development, humanitarian, and disaster aid programs were all brutally cut. These cuts come on top of the Agricultural appropriations bill that devastated our emergency food aid programs. With the worst drought in 60 years hitting the Horn of Africa, these cuts amount to the United States turning its back on its own strategic interests and walking away from our international commitments. Instead, we need to increase our emergency response to the current crisis, ensure that we have the resources to invest in long-term development, and continue our global leadership in ending hunger and famine once and for all. We need to do better, Mr. Speaker. [From IRIN, July 27, 2011] Analysis: Horn of Africa Aid Must Also Build Long-Term Resilience Geneva.--The images of starving children bear grim witness to the extent of the crisis affecting millions of people in the Horn of Africa, but they also symbolize a failure to act in time, say aid experts. ``It is a colossal outrage that the warnings went unheeded, that the lessons of previous famines have been ignored,'' says Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam. The crisis in the Horn of Africa, triggered by drought, conflict and high food prices, is affecting at least 11.6 million people, with two regions of southern Somalia suffering from famine. And the situation may well deteriorate. But the crisis, experts say, could have been mitigated by mobilizing the necessary resources ahead of time. There is increasing evidence that helping people become more resilient to the naturally recurring cycles of drought is far more effective than responding after disaster has struck. It is also sound use of donor money, they say. As such, helping farmers find alternative livelihood options, or teaching them to grow drought-resistant crops, is far more effective than providing food aid when the harvest has failed. ``We have hard evidence, including from Africa, that we need only five Swiss francs [US$6.20] per capita per annum to build up resilience,'' said Mohammed Mukhier, who heads the Disaster Risk Reduction unit at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). ``If you take the emergency response and emergency operations, you might need 200 francs [$250] per capita to deliver relief assistance for periods of just three or four months.'' Humanitarian agencies and donors agreed at an emergency meeting in Rome on 25 July that the response to the crisis must address the immediate needs of the desperate population and help build resilience to avert similar crises in the future. Risk reduction Using donor money wisely is particularly urgent in view of the threats posed globally by natural disasters, including increasingly frequent storms, floods and droughts. Advocates of the risk reduction strategy argue that donors can no longer afford to provide funding for disasters primarily after the fact. The cost is rising and compromising regular development investment. Yet, warnings of impending disaster in the Horn of Africa went largely unheeded. ``Measures that could have kept animals alive--and provided milk, and income to buy food--would have been much cheaper than feeding malnourished children, but the time for those passed with very little investment,'' said Simon Levine, of the Overseas Development Institute. Now, ``it is far too late to address anything but the worst symptoms'', he wrote on the website of the independent British think-tank. While massive funding often goes to post-disaster response, funds for preparedness and contingency planning are relatively scarce. Risk prevention is often hard to fund as it does not generate the same kind of media as a high-profile emergency response. Government donors answer to taxpayers and need to demonstrate impact--something that is difficult to do when disaster has been averted. With donors mobilized--even if funds pledged still fall well short of the US$2 billion needed--the focus in the Horn of Africa is now on emergency as well as long-term assistance. ``Short-term relief must be linked to building long-term sustainability,'' said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. ``This means an agricultural transformation that improves the resilience of rural livelihoods and minimizes the scale of any future crisis. It means climate-smart crop production, livestock rearing, fish farming and forest maintenance practices that enable all people to have year-round access to the nutrition they need.'' Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), stressed that building resilience in farming and herding communities required a long-term commitment. ``But time--as we can see from the devastating situation in the Horn of Africa--is running out,'' he told delegates at the meeting in Rome. The challenge of seeking to avoid future food insecurity crises in the Horn of Africa is daunting. Conflict has severely hampered development and relief efforts in Somalia, and affects the mobility of pastoralists and their livestock, which is key to food security in the region. But disaster risk reduction is increasingly seen as a humanitarian imperative, crucial to battling poverty and achieving sustainable development. ``Building resilience of farming and herding communities in East Africa requires a long-term, sustained commitment on the part of the region's governments and the international donor community,'' said Kevin Cleaver, IFAD's associate vice- president. ``The rains will fail. But let us not fail, too.''