Charlie Stenholm

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Texas has now three times made a very impassioned speech regarding that this is for the troops, and I want to again say, every single person over here supports our troops. In addition to that, I will say I support our President 110 percent. In fact, I believe in our opposition to this rule that I am supporting the President more than you are. Here is why. The President asked for $27.1 billion. This bill is $29.4 billion. You made reference to the Senate, in having a package to go to the Senate. The Senate is proposing to spend $31 billion. That means we are going to compromise somewhere between 29.4 and 31. That is not what the President asked for. This is more than just supporting our troops. We all support the troops. This is about fiscal responsibility and the debt limit.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, why can we not just for once be honest with the American people? Every single Member of this body is in favor of supporting our troops in Afghanistan. And any rhetoric notwithstanding is not being honest. Everyone that makes statements like my friend from Texas made a moment ago knows better than that. The war on terrorism is too serious to play political games with. To call this rule an open rule is laughable. The answer to the question of my colleague from Mississippi, Mr. Speaker, is no, he will be held out of order when he offers an amendment to pay for this war and not charge it to our grandchildren. I cannot imagine how anybody that purports to be a conservative would support this resolution and this rule if they look at the scoring that is being applied, and then saying to their colleagues it is being paid for, when my colleagues know better. Back in 1994, I joined with 321 of my colleagues, including 166 Republicans that are still here, that said we ought to put a stop to emergency spending bills having nonemergency issues being added to them. It passed 322 to 99. There were only four Republicans that opposed it in 1994. Then in 1995, when the Republicans took over the majority, they thought it was a darned good rule and they put it in saying when we have emergency spending, we ought to confine the issues and the spending to emergencies. Yet this rule waives any amendment that strikes any of those spending bills that are not emergency, because suddenly my Republican colleagues have seen the light and they believe that spending for any purpose is okay; but yet they are going to call themselves conservatives. A vote for this rule is a vote for using parliamentary tricks to sneak an increase in the debt limit into law without addressing the fiscal problems highlighted by the need to increase the debt limit. That is my opposition to this rule. That is my opposition to this bill. My colleagues should be open and honest and come out and say they are in favor of increasing the debt of this country $750 billion. But they choose to hide it. That is wrong and it is not honest.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3448. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3448, the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act conference report. I appreciate the work that Chairman Tauzin and Ranking Member Dingell have put into this bill, and I want to thank them both for the respectful and helpful way they have dealt with concerns raised by the agricultural community. However, I do need to express my concerns about the thoroughness of the process in regard to many provisions under the jurisdiction of the House Agriculture Committee. I would have been much more comfortable with a more deliberative process, including a hearing record and outside input. The conference report includes significant changes in the following areas: the regulation of biological research facilities; changes in the way our food is inspected; changes to human and animal disease monitoring efforts, and many more. Many of the provisions of this conference report appear to be needed, and are very logical in light of our Nation's current security concerns. For example, language in this agreement to coordinate and enhance our control of dangerous biological agents and toxins is certainly timely and important. In addition, this conference agreement contains needed authorizations to upgrade and secure facilities working with biological agents, both for human and animal disease research. Given the importance of these issues, along with the willingness of the other conference members to make a few important changes to the bill, I am going to support the conference agreement. Still, I feel I must reiterate that it would have been better if many of the provisions in this agreement, the majority of which are not emergency in nature, had gone through a more thorough and regular legislative process. Given the reality of the choices before us today, and the importance of some of the provisions in this legislation, I urge Members to support passage of the conference report.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Texas, for the overly generous words of introduction. Straight from the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), I want to report that our total public debt outstanding on April 30, 2002, is $5,984,677,357,213.86. That is up $323,329,559,211.21 in the last 12 months. That is up. We have borrowed a public debt of $323 billion. That is what we are here tonight to talk about. We have now reached the debt ceiling of $5.95 trillion. In fact, we are past it as of April 3, and Secretary of the Treasury Mr. O'Neill has asked that this debt ceiling be increased $750 billion. The Blue Dogs have said for the last month or 6 weeks that we are perfectly willing to give a clean up-and-down vote on increasing the debt ceiling, not by a $750 billion blank check to spend more money, but to pay for the war and to pay for the necessary spending, and all that we ask is that we have a new budget plan submitted by the administration and taken up by this Congress. The respected Concord Coalition has come out just yesterday and urged Congress to have swift action on increasing the debt ceiling and not to play games with something as serious as default on the United States of America's debt. They are right in that, and the action that will perhaps be completed in the Committee on Rules any moment now is suggesting that rather than have a clean up-and-down vote on the budget ceiling, we are going to hide it in a supplemental appropriation. And not only are we going to hide that, we are also going to hide some additional spending. I would predict to the gentleman tonight, we will not know it tomorrow because this is going to be added tonight, or sometime before we vote tomorrow, but sometime in the next 2 or 3 or 4 days we are going to find out there was some more spending, millions and millions and millions of dollars that was added to this supplemental emergency spending bill. It is going to be embarrassing for all who vote for it. Back in 1993, I participated at that time with John Kasich and Tim Penny, and that was back when we were in the majority, Republicans were in the minority, and many of us on both sides of the aisle had grown quite tired of having emergency spending bills loaded up with nonemergency spending. We introduced a bill, and I was proud to introduce the bill, and John Kasich, who later became chairman of the Committee on the Budget, Tim Penny, and it passed. It was thought to be such a good rule, and it is pretty simple: emergency spending, since it comes outside of the normal budget rules and regulations, should not have nonemergency spending added to it. In fact, people thought it was so good that when my friends on the Republican side of the aisle became in the majority, they adopted this as one of their first rules, and it is a good rule. My question tonight, Mr. Speaker, is why would we waive a rule, a rule that says that only emergency spending should be on an emergency spending bill? Why would we waive that rule and allow additional spending? Why not stick with the House rules? Why not say to everyone that wants to add a little extra spending to this bill: Is it an emergency? If it is not, wait your turn on the regular appropriation process. That is a good question. We will ask it again tomorrow. We have a little more time tonight, because I suspect that this rule tomorrow and the debate will be very controlled. I suspect that there will be no amendments allowed. I wrote a letter that I sent to the chairman of the Committee on Rules (Mr. Dreier) today saying ``Should you choose to waive this rule, then why not also make it consistent to those of us who would like to take the debt ceiling and separate it from the supplemental, and have a clean up-and-down vote on the debt ceiling-- why not allow the rule to permit that? You are playing with fire.'' In fact, we are playing with the very economy of the United States when we take a chance that somehow in the conference that will come back from the Senate that the debt ceiling will be applied to that conference. That is not a given. In fact, I hope that it does not come back with the debt ceiling attached to it. It is amazing how some of us stay inconsistent in this body. Less than 6 years ago, 225 Republicans voted to soundly reprimand and prohibit then Secretary Rubin from taking precisely the actions outlined by Secretary O'Neill again this week. The silence of the 147 Republicans who remain in the House today implies far less anxiety about the same actions today. The fact that Secretary O'Neill must resort to short-term emergency measures to meet our Nation's obligation drives home the fact that not only that Congress failed to perform its duties, but also that budget surpluses were a short-lived success which have now been replaced by more deficit spending. Again, lest people not understand what we are saying tonight, we Blue Dogs are perfectly willing, in fact, we have sent letters to the President, to the Speaker, in which we indicate we are willing to vote to increase the debt ceiling. Not by $750 billion but enough to get us through the August, well, the July reestimate of where we really are on the economy. And then in October let us pass a new budget. We Blue Dogs have suggested spending caps. In fact, we have already stated that we are willing to live with the spending levels that are present in the House-passed budget resolution. We are ready to go with that one and we believe that is a reasonable amount of spending. But what we are opposed to is hiding a very important and significant vote, hiding it in the supplemental emergency spending, spending that is necessary to pay for the war, something we are for. I remember a speech my friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) gave a few weeks ago on this subject and I have borrowed considerably from the thought that he had that night in which the gentleman acknowledged a little bit of concern in his own mind as to why we, this generation, are sending our youngest and finest to risk their lives, and we find that several have lost their lives in Afghanistan this week, why we do that and we do it on borrowed money. We are having to pay $1 billion a day now for interest on the national debt. We have increased the national debt $323 billion in the last year, and under the budget plan that we are now under that the majority refuses, refuses to even reconsider, we are going to borrow another trillion dollars in the next couple of years. Why would we do that and then when our youngest and finest come home from defending this country in the fight against terrorism, why would we do that and then ask them to work and pay in taxes so that the interest on the debt that we sent them over to fight with? It does not make us kind of like the Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw's book. I remember the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) making that speech and he was just as right as he could be. And I find that others are kind of agreeing to that. I do not understand why our colleagues, particularly some of them who purport to be conservatives and challenge us and chastise us every time we take to the floor, at least there will be one coming after us and saying, well, you Blue Dogs do this, you Blue Dogs do that, but you really do not mean this. Well, judge us by our actions and by our deeds, not by our words. What we are saying tonight again, the Concord Coalition is right. They urge swift action to avoid a debt crisis. By the end of June, Mr. O'Neill will not be able to juggle the books. He will not be able to borrow from the civil service retirement fund, from the military retirement fund, from the Medicare trust fund. It will be fish-or-cut- bait time. We can avoid that tomorrow. We can avoid that tomorrow with a simple, simple resolution that increases the debts by a smaller amount than $750 billion, of which every Blue Dog will join with our colleagues on the other side in doing that, provided they are willing to put a new economic game plan in place. We think it is time to do that. Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding back. We have the Blue Dog ABC plan. It is as simple as ABC. I have already mentioned one tonight. We are prepared, in fact, we have indicated our support for the House budget spending levels as indicated in the budget, those numbers we tried to offer in our own budget this year, but once again we are denied even having an opportunity to have an alternative budget. But the spending levels are fine. We need to recognize that strong budget enforcement rules are important. The provisions of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 expire this year and one of the things we have learned over the last 10 years is that meaningful caps on discretionary spending which tell our appropriators this is how much you can spend and if you spend more, you must offset it, it has worked. The appropriators have been responsible when the caps were there and when they were meaningful. But the 1997 Budget Act got off, a little bit off of what would be considered meaningful caps, particularly in the area of health care and rural health care and what has happened when you put unrealistic caps on without doing the policy changes. Something else that the Blue Dogs have suggested in our plan is we think we ought to have a vote on the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution again; believing that as much as we would prefer not amending the Constitution from such purpose, we believe that it would be very helpful to have that amendment added to the Constitution so no future president and no future Congresses can again do what is now happening regarding the debt and borrowing money, borrowing money and spending the money. It used to be it was tax and spend. It is now borrow and spend. And the biggest difference between tax and spend and borrow and spend, with the borrow and spend, our children and grandchildren do not have a vote on it. If you tax, everyone in this body will get unelected. If you propose taxing to pay for the spending, that is different. But borrow and spend on our grandchildren, they do not have a vote and that is easy to do; and that is what we will, again, do tomorrow. And we will hide it in the supplemental emergency spending, so that we do not have the guts to stand up and say that is what we are going to do. Well, some of us will not do that but, again, I repeat we are perfectly willing to increase the debt ceiling to dig us out of the ditch that we have dug ourselves into, even though some of us will say we did not vote for the budget. It matters not. We are all responsible, all 435 of us. We are perfectly willing to increase that debt ceiling. The gentleman mentioned also the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). One of the areas here, restore fiscal discipline, again, that is in the bill and it will be offered. Perhaps we will have to do it on the recommittal, perhaps we will have to do it in talking about defeating the rule so that we might have an opportunity to provide for a smaller debt increase. $150 billion, that would get us through to September and then in September when we come back after the August break, we will have a little, a little better idea of where the economy of this country is. And we can then, in fact, deal with a new economic game plan. But, again, we do not seem to be getting through to our friends on the other side. They do not seem to be willing to change the economic game plan which will require that for the next 10 years we are going to have to borrow at least 2.75 trillion more dollars. This $750 billion down payment or installment is just the tip of the iceberg as to what is going to be needed. I do not understand why our friends on the other side do not accept the hand that the Blue Dogs are offering to them and saying let us deal with deficit spending openly and honestly, let us deal with the debt ceiling openly and honestly, let us put spending caps back on, but let us revise the economic game plan that we are on so that we do not have to borrow the full $750 billion. And do not hide it, do not hide it in an emergency supplemental and do not waive the rules of which I agreed with my friends on the other side of the aisle about 8 years ago when I said emergency spending should be emergency spending. If it is not emergency spending do not put it on an emergency spending bill. My colleagues will be surprised the million, tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars that will be voted on in this emergency supplemental that a careful analysis will show is not emergency, and we will have to have a rule that waives, waives, the rules in order to pass it. We do not think that is the proper way to go. We will give my colleagues a clean up-and-down vote on increasing that debt ceiling. We will do what the Concorde Coalition is urging us to do. Let us not have a debt crisis. This plan does not work and it does not get added to the conference coming back. Come about mid-June we are going to be in a crisis because Secretary O'Neill cannot juggle the books forever without having an economic crisis facing our country. It is too important for us to play with that game, especially when there can be bipartisan support; and all we have got to do is sit down and revise our budget. Just like September 11, 9/11/01 changed America forever, and no one could foresee that and, yes, it has added increased spending needs for this country; but why if we need to have the increased spending do we not see the need to change the economic game plan that we are under? Why does the other side insist on staying with the same game plan while at the same time saying everything has changed? I do not understand that. I yield back to my friend from Texas.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill before us today. I was proud to be a member of the conference committee that wrote the welfare reform bill that was enacted in 1996. At the time, there were many critics of welfare reform who said that the bill would be a disaster for those truly in need. We found out that they were for the most part wrong about welfare reform. We could move people from dependence to work in a responsible way and not shortchange our commitment to the neediest in our society. States have proven that if we give them flexibility to develop programs that work in their state they can effectively serve those citizens who strive to break the cycle of welfare dependence. That is why I am troubled by the provisions in the bill before us today that severely restrict the flexibility of states such as Texas to continue the activities that have been successful in their welfare to work programs and place a tremendous unfunded mandate on states. For my own state of Texas, this bill would create an unfunded mandate of $166 million a year, in addition to the $78 million shortfall they will face under current law by 2007. Texas would be forced to implement a subsidized employment program which it has already rejected as unworkable and change parts of its welfare reform effort that have been a success in moving welfare recipients into real jobs. It would be the height of arrogance for me to stand here in Washington and vote to require Texas to implement policies on welfare reform that the Texas legislature has already considered and rejected. I must express my strong concern for the process that has brought us to the floor today. On February 7, 8, 9 and 14, 1995 the Committee on Agriculture held hearings on Reforming the Present Welfare System (Serial 104-2). That is 4 days of hearings. That does not include other related hearings that the Committee held on other nutrition issues. A record was built on the issues regarding welfare reform. I will grant you that the eventual path to enactment of Welfare Reform was a tortuous and contentious one, but everyone understood the issues compiling the legislation. Today is a totally different situation. We are considering a bill that was only recently introduced. The Committee on Agriculture which has jurisdiction over the Food Stamp provisions contained in the Welfare Reform Reauthorization legislation has not even considered the bill. Welfare Reform Reauthorization should be accorded the same consideration as other important legislation. We should hold hearings on the proposals, mark it up in Committee and then bring it to the floor. No one here today can tell us if the provisions concerning food stamps are reasonable. They are concepts that the majority is willing to put into law without asking any of the affected--nutrition advocates, state welfare administrators, and others what the practical effect will be upon the floor stamp program. We have a largely positive record to build upon with welfare reform. Why are we risking that success for cheap political expediency. If the concepts contained in the legislation are good, public scrutiny will only strengthen them. I have grave concerns about this process. The people that participate in these programs are the most vulnerable in the country. The programs that they rely on deserve a thorough examination. The so-called ``super-waivers'' advocated in this legislation has the potential to undermine current food stamp policy of providing nutrition assistance to all eligible citizens if they face economic hardships. The question is not whether states should or should not receive the flexibility under waiver authority to tailor the food stamp program rules. States already have that flexibility. The question is whether states should be allowed even greater flexibility to change the very nature of the food stamp program. If there are innovative reforms that states would like to implement that are prohibited under current law, should examine how to address those specific problems. That is what the Committee process is intended to do. Let state administrators testify before the Agriculture Committee about the changes they believe would allow them to run the program better and, let the Committee come up with legislation to address those concerns. The delay in bringing this bill to the floor today highlights the problems of ignoring the committee process and writing bills in the leadership offices. Welfare reform is too important of an issue to consider under a process that has more to do with scoring political points than building on what has been successful.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule and bill before us today. I want to make it clear that I strongly advocate giving the states the flexibility that they need to effectively serve those citizens who strive to break the cycle of welfare dependence. That is why I am troubled by the provisions in the bill before us today that severely restrict the flexibility of states such as Texas to continue the activities that have been successful in their welfare to work programs and place a tremendous unfunded mandate on states. For my own state of Texas, this bill would create an unfunded mandate of $166 million a year, in addition to the $78 million shortfall they will face under current law by 2007. Under the bill, Texas would be forced to implement policies which Texas has already rejected as unworkable and change parts of its welfare reform effort that have been a success in moving welfare recipients into real jobs because of the mandates in the bill. The welfare reform effort in Texas has been a success. It would be the height of arrogance for me to stand here in Washington and vote to require Texas to implement policies on welfare reform that the Texas legislature has already considered and rejected. The so-called ``super-waivers'' advocated in this legislation has the potential to undermine current food stamp policy that has a sound track record of providing nutrition assistance to all eligible citizens if they face economic hardships. The question is not whether states should or should not receive the flexibility under waiver authority to tailor the food stamp program rules. States already have that flexibility. The question is whether states should be allowed even greater flexibility to change the very nature of the food stamp program. If there are innovative reforms that states would like to implement that are prohibited under current law, we should examine how to address those specific problems. That is what the Committee process is intended to do. Let state administrators testify before the Agriculture Committee about the changes they believe would allow them to run the program better, let the Committee examine the consequences of those changes, and then come up with legislation to address those concerns. The delay in bringing this bill to the floor today highlights the problems of ignoring the committee process and writing bills in the leadership offices. Welfare reform is too important to consider under a process that has more to do with scoring political points than building on what has been successful.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield the remaining 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).

Mr. STENHOLM. I thank my colleague for that historic lesson there. I happened to remember one of the happiest days in my legislative career here in this body was in 1995 when Speaker Newt Gingrich did schedule a vote on the balanced budget constitutional amendment and it passed with the required two-thirds vote. I remember one of the saddest days standing in the back of the Senate a few weeks later and watching it lose by one vote. If it had passed the Senate at that time, we could not have passed the budget last year that we passed and we would not be here tonight talking about asking for a new plan, or increasing the debt ceiling. You could have borrowed money to fight the war. That is totally permissible. Emergency. But you could not borrow the money, $750 billion, to give this generation a tax cut with our children and grandchildren's money. You could not do that, any more than State and local governments could who have to operate under a constitutional requirement. That is what we are here tonight to talk about, and lest we get into what I understand happened last week when our colleagues were here and the next speaker came up and started lambasting the farm bill because it spends too much and, therefore, it too is contributing to the problems that we have with our debt ceiling. Criticism has arisen that Congress has passed a budget-buster farm bill. Yet Congress has been passing ad hoc emergency assistance legislation for the last 4 years because direct payments to support farm income were fixed and did not increase when farm incomes fell. Ad hoc assistance has totaled $28 billion on agricultural programs, $36 billion when you include nutrition programs. I can show you CBO's estimates of the bill that passed and the President signed yesterday that shows that we will spend less dollars of our taxpayer dollars each year beginning this year, 2002, and each year through 2011 under the bill that the President signed yesterday. That is less dollars. That is not inflation increases. That is less dollars. Since farm prices declined in 1998, farm program spending has averaged $24 billion per year. We will be below $19.5 billion in each year projected currently under the farm bill that passed. Many will say that is too much money to be spent. On that we can argue. We can argue that, yes, it is too much money to be spent, but not if you live in farm country, not if you have been experiencing prices received at the marketplace that approximate Depression-era prices. Does this farm bill solve all of that? No, it does not. But one thing it does do, it gives predictability to our farmers and gives us an opportunity to answer the long-term problem, one of which I hope the Senate will soon do, and that is pass trade promotional authority so our President and his representatives can sit down and begin negotiating away the tremendous amount of subsidies that are present in the world today, including our own. The spending for this bill the President signed yesterday was approved in the congressional budget passed in 2001 that contained the $1.6 trillion tax cut. The spending for the ag bill was in the same budget. Congress has stayed within this budget in passing the bill. New estimates have shown both the cost of the legislation increasing $9.3 billion and the cost of current farm programs increasing $8.3 billion. These estimates are part of the same economic changes that have contributed to the surpluses of 2001 becoming the deficits of 2002. I do not stand here tonight to say we shut our eyes to any part of the budget. The farm bill we passed last week fit within the budget resolution we passed last year. It is not fair to single out agriculture for being a budget buster when we complied with the budget resolution if we are not willing to revisit all other tax and spending items that were included in the budget resolution. That is why we have come here to argue that we need a new budget resolution that responds to the changes in the budget outlook which looks at the entire budget. We on the Committee on Agriculture are prepared to do our share in making tough choices to reduce spending on our programs if it is part of a comprehensive plan that puts everything on the table and makes tough choices across the board. This seems to escape a lot of people. There are those that believe we should not spend one penny in subsidizing our farmers. They completely ignore what is happening out there in the world. When other countries have the advantage of a weak currency compared to our strong dollar, I do not care whether you are producing cotton, wheat, corn, sugar, widgets, airplanes, you name it, it is very difficult to compete when we have as strong a dollar as we have and other countries have weak currency. That is a temporary phenomenon. It was kind of like seemingly that our income, our tax incomes were going to go up as far as the eye could see because we have come through a very, very good period of economic growth. The 1990s were unprecedented in economic expansion and growth in this country. Some believed, I guess, that it would continue to operate that way, but then, lo and behold, the stock markets quit going up and started coming down and tax revenues came down and it should not have taken a nuclear physicist to figure that out. But from the standpoint of agriculture we are still out there competing in the international marketplace and it is tough going right now. But I made the argument last week when we passed that bill with 280 votes on the floor of the House that perhaps it is not a bad investment for the American taxpayer to spend a few pennies of their hard-earned money to support an agricultural system that has given America the most abundant food supply, the best quality of food, the safest food supply at the lowest cost to our people of any other country in the world, warts and all, subsidies and all, expenditures and all. No other country in the world's people are fed within 1.5 percent of the GDP, gross domestic product, in that country as well as Americans are, including the cost of the farm bill. Could we do better? I will never say that we could not do better. But I think that some of the criticism that we are receiving from that is criticism that should not be given with a full mouth, because many of those who are criticizing are completely ignoring the fact that our grocery stores are full, the prices at least as far as the farmer is concerned and, well, let us just be totally honest, as far as the cost of food to the American people, no other country in the world is fed within 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product, and I submit to you tonight that it is because of farm policy that we followed in the past. Things like the conservation title of this farm bill, the largest single increase in the history of our country in one bill. Yet some who purport to be environmentalists are criticizing it. It did not quite do it the way they wanted it done. There again, that is the American way. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. The research, another strong part of this farm bill, continuing to put some investment of our taxpayer dollars into research in finding new and better ways and safer ways to grow our food. Rural development. Out in rural America, things are not all going real well. Whether it be health care, whether it be education, whether it be jobs, all are directly dependent upon a sound and healthy farm income and we do not have one. That is why I think almost two-thirds of this body and two-thirds of the Senate passed and why the President signed the bill yesterday. But I repeat, tonight we are talking about the debt ceiling and I am not about to stand on this floor and be as two-faced as some of the leaders of this body are when they say one thing when they are talking 6 years ago and they say another thing today. Increasing the debt limit is serious business. Having a budget game plan for this country that will get us back into a surplus or balanced budget, not so much a surplus although I would like to see us run a surplus and pay down a little more of our debt, and I would like to see us address the problems of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and do that before we do some of the other things that we are now talking about doing with the current economic game plan. We are not tonight suggesting to play politics with the debt limit, and we are certainly not trying to force a crisis. Again, I repeat, Mr. Speaker, we, at least a good number of us on this side of the aisle, are prepared to vote to increase the debt ceiling, but not $750 billion, and not until we have a new economic blueprint in place. We do not think that is unreasonable. It is exactly what you as the majority party were saying when it was a Democrat in the White House, exactly what you were saying then. You were right then. I repeat, you were right 6 years ago in forcing President Clinton to have a new economic game plan that ultimately came and brought us to the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. You were right then. Why are you insisting on being so wrong today? We are willing to support a temporary increase in the debt limit to meet the expenses of the war and allow government to meet its obligations, but hold off on a long-term increase in the debt until we have a plan in place. We do not want to force a default on the debt, but we do want to use this debate as an opportunity to reexamine our long-term budget policies. It would be irresponsible to provide a blank check for increased borrowing authority without taking action to protect taxpayers from even further increases in the national debt. The gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) spoke about the need of scheduling another vote on the balanced budget constitutional amendment. The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) and others, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) on the other side of the aisle, are pushing for just that. I hope we will see that vote later this year. We also would like to see some strong budget enforcement rules. They are just as important a component in restoring fiscal discipline and making sure the budget remains in balance once we have done the hard work necessary to bring it back into balance. The provisions of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 expire this year. Unless we renew our budget discipline, Congress will continue to find ways to break its own rules and pass more legislation that puts still more red ink on the national ledger. Enforceable spending limits will serve as a fiscal guardrail to keep our spending within the Nation's fiscal means. The Blue Dog ABC's plan includes legislation introduced by the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) which would extend and strengthen the provisions of the Budget Enforcement Act that are set to expire this year. This legislation is similar to budget enforcement legislation introduced by Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, but extends budget enforcement for 5 years and adds several provisions to improve enforcement of budget rules and increase accountability in the budget process. I know what Chairman Nussle wants to do. I think there are some areas that we can in fact have some bipartisan support for because having meaningful caps on discretionary spending, all 13 appropriations bills, meaningful so that we live within them, is something that is good budget policy and will help be a significant part of this new budget plan that we have talked about. Again, I repeat, those of us on Agriculture do not ask for an exemption. Far from it. We believe that we should be part of any changes in the budget process, including the criticism that is coming of our farm bill from some of our foreign friends, competitors. We have no intention, at least the bill that the President signed yesterday, there is certainly no intention by the President of the United States and no intention of the House Committee on Agriculture that we would not live up to the agreements that we have signed and agreed to live within and under in previous trade negotiations. What we said this time, though, is that we intend to have our negotiators negotiate from strength. We are allowed to spend in support of our agriculture in this country $19.1 billion per year. We do not intend to spend $19.11 billion, or less if necessary, and I hope it is necessary that we spend less, because one thing I hope the general public understands, the only reason we are having spending at the level that we are today in support of agricultural products is the fact that we have Depression-era prices. Cotton is selling for 30 cents a pound and less; wheat, less than $3 a bushel; and corn, about $2 a bushel. These are the same price levels that we saw back in the 1950s. If one's salary was 1950s vintage, one had better be a lot more productive today than you were then, or you would not be making too good of a living today. That is why, if prices go up, the amount of subsidization goes down. Certainly I think the whole world would be better off if the amount of subsidization goes down, not up. We are perfectly willing, in the next round of negotiations, assuming the Senate will get on with doing their job in passing the trade promotional authority and we can get on with the negotiating, to reduce the amount of eligibility of subsidization in the United States on a par basis with other countries. The same is true on the budget. Mr. Speaker, before I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps), let me just conclude by saying that there are a significant number of Democrats who would be willing to support an increase in the debt limit as part of a responsible plan to restore fiscal discipline. The approach outlined by the Blue Dogs, an immediate, temporary increase in the debt limit with a larger increase allowed as part of a plan to put the budget on a path to balance, accompanied by strong budget enforcement legislation, provides a road map for a bipartisan solution to our fiscal problems and gridlock on the debt limit. That is our offer. We think it is a reasonable offer. We would like very much to be included in being part of the solution, because borrowing another $750 billion on our grandchildren's future is not the best option for us to be considering in this year of 2002, one of those years divisible by 2. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Phelps).

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, tonight we want to come again before the body and talk about raising the debt limit. It is fascinating, having been around this place for now almost 23 years, to hear and to see how various Members of this body react to certain situations that come up, depending on whether they are in the minority or in the majority. And there is no question that we have a serious problem facing our Nation coming up beginning this week, and then about June 28 it becomes of crisis proportion. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has formally requested Congress to increase the statutory limit on the publicly held debt by $750 billion, and that is billion with a ``b,'' up from the current level of $5.95 trillion to $6.7 trillion. Just today, Secretary O'Neill wrote the Congress again telling us that he will use up our borrowing authority by the end of this week and that we will have to begin juggling with the books in order to avoid a default, and by the end of June, at the latest, he will run out of maneuvers. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report indicating that revenues are coming in much lower than expected and the deficit will be much higher than they projected earlier this year. It is likely we will borrow the entire Social Security trust fund and then some and still have a deficit of over $150 billion this year. The need for an increase in the debt limit of the magnitude requested by the administration cannot be explained by the economy and cost of the war. The administration projects that under the President's budget policies the national debt will be roughly $2.75 trillion more debt than was projected at the beginning of last year, before the President's budget policies and this body enacted them. The cost of the war and the downturn in the economy explain roughly $800 billion of that increase in projected debt, which leaves nearly $1.9 trillion more debt than was projected a year ago that is not explained by spending on the war on terrorism or the economic downturn. In fact, the administration acknowledged prior to September 11 that the debt limit would need to be raised much earlier than it projected when the President submitted his initial budget proposal in January. Last August, the administration indicated that it expected that the debt limit would have to be increased in 2003, 5 years earlier than they projected when the budget was submitted. Well, a year ago, the administration indicated that we would not need to raise the debt limit for 7 years and actually claimed that there was a danger that the government would actually pay off the debt held by the public too quickly. The Blue Dogs warned about the danger of making long-term commitments for tax cuts or new spending programs based on projected surpluses and proposed setting aside half of the on-budget surplus for a cushion to protect against unforeseen changes. In fact, we supported a budget here about a year ago that would have been much more conservative than the budget that passed and was signed into law; but we, being in the minority, lost. It is interesting when one listens to the leadership of this body, and here let me give a little quote. When President Clinton asked for a new bill to increase the debt limit, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), now the majority leader of this body, said: ``He will get it, but with conditions.'' That was January 23, 1996. The same majority leader of this body, responding on April 9, called the debate over raising the debt limit ``an academic question'' and described the whole idea of a debt ceiling as ``political.'' He said, ``My recommendation is to take the President's number and move it. Whatever number that is, I don't care.'' On January 23, 1996, the majority leader said, ``House Republicans insist that any increase in the debt limit must be tied to substantial concessions by the White House in talks over balancing the Federal budget.'' On April 10, 2002, the same majority leader of this body said, ``Congress and the House of Representatives should quickly approve President Bush's request for a $750 billion increase in the on's borrowing authority.'' Now, I agreed with Majority Leader Armey 6 years ago when there was a Democrat in the White House that was not putting forward a plan that would bring us into balance as quickly as we needed to. I agreed with the majority leader then, but I disagree with him tonight; and I disagree with the leadership of this body in refusing to put forward a plan to get us back on a balanced budget for our country. That is what the Blue Dogs wrote the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), last Friday. The leadership of our Blue Dogs sent a letter to Speaker Hastert in which we offered in good faith to work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to put together a blueprint, a new budget, if you please, that would get us back on a path of balancing our budget and getting out of the Social Security trust funds. Now, I do not know why the leadership of this House has suddenly taken such a turn that we have seen taken over the last several years in which very seldom are ideas from this side of the aisle ever taken into serious consideration. Just last Thursday, we had the defense authorization bill on this floor, supported tremendously in a bipartisan way, as they always are. But we had a situation there that I do not recall seeing in previous years, in which Members on this side of the aisle had amendments but were denied the opportunity to have their amendment taken up and voted on on the floor of the House. My colleague who will join me in just a moment, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), had a couple of not unreasonable amendments. He felt very strongly that this body, the Congress, and the House of Representatives in particular, should have had an opportunity to debate whether or not we are going to have a new base closing commission. Not an unreasonable request. We had amendments that were allowed that had 10 minutes, 20 minutes; but the gentleman from Mississippi was denied. He exercised his right to express himself, and I hope the leadership of this body listened to what the gentleman was saying last Thursday. What the gentleman was saying is, this body, the House of Representatives, has been the envy of most of the rest of the world since our very creation, in which individuals have the right and the opportunity to bring up their ideas and have them discussed on the floor of the House and voted upon. What is so unusual about that and what is it that seems now that in most cases we do not have the kind of committee hearings, we do not have a rule that allows various Members to express themselves on this floor? Well, tonight, we take this hour to talk about our willingness on this side of the aisle to work with our colleagues, if there are any on the other side that are interested, in restoring fiscal sovereignty, fiscal strength to the budget of the United States of America. We say this and we are prepared to offer some suggestions. In fact, it is interesting, there are very few of these suggestions that are new. They have all been tried. It matters not which side of the aisle. So this is what we want to talk about tonight. We would like to see, before we vote to increase how much money our country can borrow, we would like to see a new plan, because the current plan is now telling us that we will have deficits as far as the eye can see. And as one Member who has spent a good part of the last 6 years trying to work in a bipartisan way, in a bicameral way on Social Security reform, it pains me quite a bit to see that we cannot even bring that subject up and talk about it. I hope that changes also. Tonight we just want to again renew our offer, our plea to the majority of this body that before we increase our debt ceiling, let us take another look at the budget plan that we are operating under. If my colleagues on the other side want votes on our side, we have already said we will give those votes to increase the debt ceiling, but not $750 billion with a blank check. We are perfectly willing to give an increase in the debt ceiling that will get us to September 30 of this year. Let us wait and see how the CBO reestimates the spending and the revenue that are going to be coming in; and then let us take that new estimate and when we come back in September, let us pass a new budget, one of the better things we could do for the economy of this country. And in so doing, then we would be prepared to offer another short- term debt ceiling increase to get us to next April or May. Again, let the new Congress come back, the new Congress that will be elected in November, and let us see what our economy is doing come January and a new round of budget discussions and budget debates. It seems to us that that makes sense. But it seems to the other side of the aisle that, no, we passed a budget last year, and we are going to stay with it no matter what. The budget that was passed last year assumed 100 percent of the projected surplus and left no margin for error. We put ourselves on a course to run up our debt. Now that circumstances have changed, the projected surpluses have disappeared. And while we agree that the unforeseen war on terrorism and economic downturn have had an impact on the budget in the short term, we do not believe that these events should be used to justify a return to chronic, long-term deficits or hide a $750 billion increase in the debt ceiling. The leadership of this body has indicated that they plan to slip language into the supplemental appropriation bill that will allow them to hide an increase in the debt limit in an omnibus conference report without any debate or vote. We do not believe that we should use a spending bill to fight the war on terrorism to hide or justify a long- term $750 billion increase in the debt ceiling absent a plan to improve our long-term fiscal position. Members on the other side were very willing to stand up and take credit when we were passing legislation that put us into the situation we face today and made an increase in the debt limit necessary. They should be willing to stand up and be counted now that it has come time to pay the bills by raising the debt limit. We need a plan. Before Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling by $750 billion, the President must work with Congress to put the fiscal house back in order, just as a family facing financial problems must work with a bank to establish a financial plan in order to get approval to refinance their debts. We will not vote to approve an increase in the debt limit to allow the government to continue on the current course of deficits as far as the eye can see. Let me quote another leader of our House, my fellow colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), when he said, ``We said from the beginning of this Congress that we want to negotiate with the President. But we cannot negotiate with a President that does not want to balance the budget. We do not want to negotiate over whether to balance the budget or not, we want him to submit a budget that balances by CBO, which he called for. We will negotiate with him in the parameters of a balanced budget and negotiate over the priorities within that balanced budget. But if the President cannot submit one, how do we negotiate apples with oranges? You know, the saying goes, if at first you do not succeed try, try again.'' Here again, this is one Member that agreed with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) back when he was talking to a different President. We agree tonight. And I do not believe that we should have a confrontation with this White House over this matter. I think the confrontation is right here within the House of Representatives. And that is what the Blue Dogs are offering again, the willingness to work with our friends on the other side of the aisle to come up with a new budget plan that does get us back into balance. Mr. Speaker, with those opening remarks I turn to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) and yield to him to continue this discussion.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me say, in the Constitution there is a little part of it that says ``promote the general welfare.'' And I appreciate the gentleman's pointing out that it is difficult to find supporting our farmers in the Constitution. I do not stand on the floor and say that we are special or we are different than anyone else. Well, I guess I do. That was not a correct statement. I do believe that American agriculture and producers have done a pretty good job of feeding America and a good part of the rest of the world and do believe as we argued strenuously for the amount of money that was passed. So I guess, yes, I do, I do believe that. But I also believe very strongly that anyone else that has an opinion should have the opportunity to stand and make the same arguments. If I can get 217 of my colleagues to agree with me, it passes, and that is our system. If I might just continue. I want to get back, I agree with the gentleman, on the 13 appropriations bills, and that is why if the gentleman heard what we were talking about a moment ago, we think we ought to put a meaningful, reasonable cap on discretionary spending as part of the budget process. I think the gentleman and I will find, maybe not an agreement on the amount, but at least that we would find an agreement on the policy and procedure that we should follow to have a little bit of restraint. I appreciate the gentleman's generosity. I appreciate the gentleman admitting that he voted for the budget that provided for the $73.5 billion. So I take a little bit of offense when the gentleman stands on the floor as he did starting tonight by decrying this $73.5 billion when he was the one joining, not with me because I did not support this budget, but he said $73.5 billion was not an obscene amount of money for the budget we operate under. Now times have changed; and, therefore, we are saying now let us take another look at the budget. If we need to trim, let us trim; but let us trim across the board.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the good humor in which the gentleman is approaching the cornflower blue. But let me point out that the farm bill, the $73.5 billion, the gentleman, I believe I am correct, voted for that budget that provided the $73.5 billion that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Combest) and I, the speaker tonight, and others then proceeded to mark-up the bill. It was not called those critical comments when it passed as a budget, but it is only after we have put together the policy in which the criticism comes. I would appreciate the gentleman acknowledging that as I was talking about balancing the budget, that I included farm spending in any reductions in spending that must accompany any kind of a new budget. That is what we are saying, and I do not think that is inconsistent at all.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, few issues could be more important to the future security of the United States than passage of House Joint Resolution 87. For over two decades, scientists have subjected the suitability of Yucca Mountain to intense scrutiny, at a cost of more than $7 billion. It has been concluded that radioactive material can be safely stored deep underground in this area. Today, this material is located at 131 different sites around the country in temporary above-ground storage. As a result, almost 162 million people live within 75 miles of one of these temporary storage facilities. Consolidating this material in one safe, secure underground location is the rational answer to the waste disposal question. Furthermore, by moving excess waste from commercial and decommissioned plants, we will remove 131 targets from a potential terrorist attack. Some would make an issue of transportation. The Department of Transportation, in conjunction with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has ensured that many precautions are taken when transporting nuclear materials relating to routing, security, tracking of progress via satellite on a 24-hour basis, and coordination with State officials. To date, we have transported more than 2,700 shipments of spent nuclear fuel over the last 30 years, traveling over 1.6 million miles without any harmful release of radiation. Preliminary route selection and detailed planning will begin at least 5 years before the first shipment takes place. Nothing is perfect, but I would say, as a rural electric cooperative manager, I worked to promote alternative energy sources 9 years before coming to Congress. Our membership thought it important to invest in alternative energy sources such as nuclear as a means to balance our energy budget. This was in 1970. The 103 operating nuclear power plants in the United States are providing 20 percent of the Nation's electricity. In fact, nuclear power supplies 10 percent of the electricity generated in Texas, including that produced by TXU's Comanche Peak plant in my district. Please join me in supporting the Federal Government's commitment to safely store nuclear fuel by voting for House Joint Resolution 87.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. I most certainly am not, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to briefly summarize where we are. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this conference report. I, too, want to begin by congratulating my friend, my neighbor, and the chairman of my committee for his work and action over the last 2\1/2\ years. His leadership has been exemplary, and for that, I am very appreciative. Speaking from the minority side, from the very beginning, the hearings that we held all over the country in which we asked for solutions when bringing the bill to the full floor of the House, after full deliberations in the committee in which every minority interest was heard, as well as every majority interest, and then coming to the floor of the House and having the full discussion under an open rule in which every Member of this body was permitted to have their say, and now, the last 4 weeks, in a very difficult conference with the other body, Mr. Chairman, the chairman's leadership has brought it to this point. I am proud to have ridden shotgun with the gentleman in this endeavor. Now we have urgency before us. It is time to report this bill out of the House, out of the Senate, and get it to the President, where he will sign it, as he has said today. Mr. Speaker, this conference report is well-balanced. It restores the safety net for producers, it boosts spending on farm conservation programs by over 80 percent, it restores food stamps to immigrant children and the disabled, it addresses critical needs in rural development, and it tightens payments limits, and it is fiscally responsible. We have stayed within the $73.5 billion that the Committee on the Budget gave us. As we have already heard from several speakers, if we really want to be fiscally responsible, we will pass this bill. We will not continue to depend upon emergency ad hoc spending, which has, as we have just heard, has been $30 billion over the last 4 years. This bill is fiscally responsible. It does most of the things, even though it cannot please all of us. There are still those on the Committee on Agriculture and in this body that do not agree with everything that we have done, but I commend this as a reasonable compromise. Mr. Speaker, I am in strong support of the conference report and oppose any motion to recommit. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all of my colleagues for the debate we have had. House consideration under an open rule resulted in passage of the bill by a vote of 291 to 120. After the Senate debated the bill for weeks, we had conferees from 10 House committees and the Senate come to agreement on the conference report that is before the House today. Mr. Speaker, I particularly congratulate the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, my friend and neighbor, Larry Combest. His leadership from the beginning has been outstanding. Under his guidance the Agriculture Committee, the full House, and finally the conference committee developed a refined farm bill that brings together a wide variety of interests. Mr. Speaker, we need to pass this conference report without delay. It has been several years since we could say that things were going well in American agriculture. Right now, corn is valued at under $2 per bushel, wheat--about $2.75; soy beans--about $4.60; and cotton is under 35 cents a pound. Our ability to export is hampered by an unfavorable exchange rate. The bottom line: Our producers need this farm bill. Mr. Speaker, the conference report is a well-balanced package: It restores the safety net for agricultural procedures; it boosts spending on Farm Conservation programs by over 80 percent; it restores food stamps to immigrant children and disabled; it addresses critical needs in rural development; and it tightens payment limits. Mr. Speaker, I know that many of my colleagues wish there was more in this conference report. So do I. I know there are colleagues who wish that some provisions were not included in this conference report. So do I. But we had to compromise and respect the views of our colleagues from the other body. The bill is not perfect, but it will do a great deal of good for our Nation. Agricultural producers will have greater financial security, hungry people will be fed, and natural resources will be protected and preserved. Mr. Speaker, all of my colleagues should be clear about this. Regardless of the instructions, a motion to recommit will kill this conference report and everything in it. I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on any motion to recommit and vote yes on the conference report. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference report. We have brought to the House a well-balanced bill, and I believe that a strong vote for its adoption will demonstrate the House's agreement. I want to thank my colleagues in the House for their cooperation and assistance in bringing this bill forward. My colleagues on the Agriculture Committee, on both sides of the aisle, deserve a great deal of credit for their willingness to get the farm bill off to a good start last July. Since then, it has sometimes gone slowly but we have persevered and can be gratified with the final result. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank all of my colleagues who served on the conference committee, including those from the nine committees other than the Agriculture Committee. The broad support of the conferees who signed the report is another testament to the balanced and inclusive approach that was taken to develop this important legislation. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I must take a moment to congratulate the Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, my friend and neighbor, Larry Combest. His leadership from the beginning has been outstanding. Under his guidance, the Agriculture Committee, the full House, and finally the conference committee developed a refined farm bill that brings together a wide variety of interests. Mr. Speaker, on October 5 of last year, after a full debate under an open rule, this House passed the farm bill by a strong bipartisan vote of 291 to 120. On February 13, the Senate passed its version by a vote of 58 to 40, after weeks of floor consideration. Following Senate passage, conferees from the Agriculture Committees--and nine other House committees--have worked daily to develop the compromise that is before the House today. As we usually see with conference reports on important issues, no one involved is completely happy with the final result. It is a truly balanced package, however, and there are many reasons to support swift passage of this conference report. Mr. Speaker, the conference report before the House has many features. First and foremost, it provides for a strong safety net for our Agricultural producers. The bill retains the flexibility in production and reliability of decoupled assistance that were provided for in the 1996 Farm Act. Above and beyond that, the countercyclical payments it provides to program crop producers will alleviate the need for Congress to provide additional, ad hoc, income support when prices are in decline. Marketing loan tools will continue to be available to program crop producers. Mr. Speaker, farm program support will be governed by new payment limit provisions. The conference compromise reduces the limit on fixed payments by 20 percent: the limit on countercyclical payments--in comparison to the House bill--are reduced 13 percent, and loan deficiency payments and marketing loan gains are cut in half. The total dollar limitation on program assistance under the conference compromise is reduced by 35 percent in comparison to the House bill. We have maintained the ability of producers to use generic certificates in order to continue to support them in these times of very low prices. New transparency rules regarding payment provisions are being included, allowing us to gather information in order to provide a clearer view of the distribution of program payments. Mr. Speaker, the conference report extends the dairy price support program through 2007, and restores the program's budgetary baseline. In addition, the conferees propose a modification of the Senate's direct dairy payment program. Under the provision, a countercyclical payment will be made to dairy producers for any month during which the class I price for Boston under Federal milk marketing orders is lower than $16.94. A participating producer would be eligible for payment on all production up to 2.4 million pounds per year. While some Members will oppose any direct payments to dairy farmers, the conference has substantially improved the program in comparison to the Senate's provision. This is a temporary program that will help ease the sting of the loss of the Northeast Dairy Compact--which is not extended by the bill--for dairy farmers in the Northeast. It also provides fair support to producers throughout the Nation when milk prices fall. Mr. Speaker, the conference substitute follows the House bill by ending the quota program for peanuts. Under this dramatic reform, peanut quota will be retired, and producers will become eligible for the types of marketing loan, countercyclical, and fixed payment benefits that apply to program crops. The bill extends the sugar program and provides needed support for sheep and goat ranchers, as well as for beekeepers. Mr. Speaker, the conference compromise also provides for extension of chapter 12--Small Family Farmer Bankruptcy provisions. The chapter will be extended to run until December 31, 2002. The conference report provides for truly dramatic increases in spending on farm conservation programs. I know that many of my colleagues are hearing from one organization or another that the report falls short in this area. Sometimes those folks attempt to make their case without providing the facts. Here are the facts, based on the actual provisions of the conference report: $17.1 billion is added to farm conservation programs over 10 years. This bill is an 80 percent increase in farm conservation spending. Conservation Reserve Program acreage will rise from 36.4 to 39.2 million areas. The Wetlands Reserve Program acreage cap rises from 975,000 acres to 2.275 million acres. New Grasslands Reserve Program to protect 2 million acres. Farmland Protection Program--A 20-fold increase. Wildlife Habit Incentives Program--A 10-fold increase. EQIP--Annual spending will rise to $1.3 billion, compared to $200 million under current law. New Conservation Security Program to provide incentive payments for stewardship on working farms. Mr. Speaker, the bill also allocates additional resources for nutrition program spending. In solidarity with the Bush administration, we propose to restore food stamp benefits for immigrant children and for disabled immigrants, as well as for immigrants who have been in the country for 5 years. Transitional benefits are provided for households leaving the TANF program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. As a result of this legislation, the food stamp quality control system is reformed and procedures are aligned with other welfare programs. The Emergency Food Assistance Program and other feeding programs are extended and expanded under the provisions of the bill. Altogether, nutrition program spending is increased by $6.4 billion above baseline levels. Mr. Speaker, in addition to the programs I have mentioned, funding is provided to reduce backlogs in the rural water and waste programs, to reaffirm our commitment to helping farmers compete for foreign markets, to boost research on agricultural production, and to continue the Global Food for Education Initiative, GFEI. The conference report also establishes a requirement that food labels identify the country of origin of meat, fruits and vegetables, fish, and peanuts. The Secretary must provide guidelines for voluntary labeling by September 30, 2002, and the program would become mandatory in 2 years. There are many concerns that have been raised by the affected parties regarding the implementation of country of origin labeling. I want to assure everyone interested in this issue that the committee intends to closely monitor the establishment of this program and to fine tune it as necessary before the final mandatory program becomes effective. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I need to speak to the budget aspect of this legislation. I must admit, it greatly disturbs me to come to this floor and support a conference report with $73.5B in spending, given our current projections on deficit spending. However, when I sit down and try to analyze a better solution, I can find none. When I look at our past actions on disaster and income assistance, I quickly come to the conclusion that the only way we can avoid more costly year-by-year assistance to agriculture is to provide a reliable long term agricultural policy that includes a programmatic response to low prices as well as disasters. I believe that this bill will save money in the long run because it lessens our need to rely on disaster and income assistance. Mr. Speaker, I know that many of my colleagues wish there was more in this conference report. So do I. I know there are colleagues who wish that some provisions were not included in this conference report. So do I. But we had to compromise and respect the views of our colleagues from the other body. The bill is not perfect, but it will do a great deal of good for our Nation. Agricultural producers will have greater financial security, hungry people will be fed, and natural resources will be protected and preserved. I strongly urge my colleagues to embrace these objectives and to vote for the adoption of the conference report. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry).

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the remaining time and correct some of the misstatements that have been made concerning this bill. To those that suggest that we need a little more time, where were they for the last 2\1/2\ years when the committee and subcommittees held numerous hearings all over the country? I did not notice many of my colleagues being the most vocal being in many of the hearings much of the time. To those that suggest that these are too high loans for cotton, which has come under a little bit of discussion, the loan rate for cotton in this bill is 52 cents. That is exactly what it was in 1986. So to those that suggest we have too high loans, they are completely ignoring market reality. To those that said that we are getting 40 percent of our income from the government, the 2000 figures from WTO show that the United States farmer receives 22 percent of his income from the government, which I agree is too high, but the farmers in the European Union gets 38 percent of their income from government. A lot of the other comments today, particularly some of the editorial comments that we have had on this bill, reminds me what President Eisenhower said in the 1950s: ``Farming looks mighty easy when your tractor is a pencil, and you are a thousand miles away from the corn patch.'' I think many of the comments that have been made in the editorial pages are completely ignoring the market reality that we have down on the farm, particularly when we see conservation, that we did not do enough on conservation. There is an 80 percent increase in this bill, the largest single increase in conservation spending, I believe, in the history of the Congress. Budgetary responsibility, take a look at what we have done time and time again regarding emergency ad hoc disaster assistance: $30 billion over the last 4 years. What we do in this bill is put in predictability. The lion's share of spending in this bill does not go to stimulate production, only $2.8 billion goes toward marketing loans. The rest goes for nutrition, trade, conservation, and rural development. That is not quite what was stated on this floor. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about the $73.5 billion. This year the American farmer and rancher will export $54.5 billion worth of our commodities. If you multiply that by 10, that means the return on investment for the United States taxpayer will be $545 billion, assuming we do not gain any additional market share. Now, I think it is particularly interesting that some of our foreign competitors are lending their voices to criticism of the work of the bill that we put before the full House today. The European Union Commissioner has said that the United States should receive a failing grade on the farm bill. He recently said in a statement of April 30, ``I am astonished by claims made in the United States Congress that much of these price-linked subsidies would not be counted against U.S. commitments. The U.S. will have to respect WTO rules.'' Absolutely we will respect WTO rules. Nothing in this bill and what the Committee on Agriculture has recommended in this conference bill has anything other than we will respect WTO rules. I say to the Agriculture Commissioner of the European Union that his facts are wrong and that this conference report will comply with all of the U.S. trade obligations within the WTO. In fact, it is interesting to me, the European Union's commissioner is saying this because he seems to be trying to draw attention away from his own problems subsidizing agriculture. Basically what we are doing with this bill, we are saying loudly and clearly as we enter the next WTO round, the United States Government will stand shoulder to shoulder with our producers in the international marketplace and we will negotiate down these subsidies, but we will demand that other countries do an equivalent amount, instead of what has happened to us time and time and time again in previous negotiations. We seem to be the ones to cut. When you have a situation today in which European farmers are subsidized by over $300 an acre, and we are in the $40 range, is that fair? Is that a level playing field? I say to my friends until Europe, let us negotiate them down. Let us recognize that, yes, all farmers would be better off if we did not have as much government involvement, but we are not going to unilaterally disarm our farmers. And those who choose to vote for the motion to recommit or against this bill, that is exactly what you are doing. Finally, in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, time and time again we ignore this one fact: we as a Nation are blessed to live in a country that has the most abundant food supply, the best quality of food, the safest food supply at the lowest cost to our people of any other country in the world. That does not happen by accident. That happens because, time and time again, we have had agricultural programs that recognize the importance, yes, of the safety net to our producers, but also to conservation, to food stamps, to feeding people, to addressing the critical needs in rural development. We have always done this. And this bill today, one of the strongest titles is the nutrition title. It distinguishes itself as one of the most important pieces of food stamp legislation since the landmark 1977 act 25 years ago. The most significant program simplification since the 1977 act is in this bill. Many of the title provisions are targeted toward low-income families with children, particularly the working poor. The bill will allow transitional food stamps for families that are leaving welfare. The things we have said over and over that we want to accomplish, this bill accomplishes it in the nutritional title. Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the motion to recommit. It will not make the bill better. I encourage my colleagues to support this balanced bill that does not only what our American farmers want done but the 280 million American consumers that will benefit from that which we are about to pass. Mr. Speaker, I have always believed a strong nutrition title is a crucial part of any farm bill. That is particularly so when we can improve our ability to support hard-working low-income families and to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet. Doing so gives balance to the bill and benefits both production agriculture and low-income Americans. I am pleased that this year's farm bill has a nutrition title that all of us can be proud to support. The nutrition title stands out in several respects. It strengthens incentives for families to work and thereby promotes welfare reform goals. It does so by making food stamps better available to low-income working poor families that do not want to get welfare. It does so by facilitating the transition from welfare to work. It does so by targeting relief on needy families with children, particularly the working poor. And, it does so by simplifying the program. Under this bill, States and low-income households alike should find less paperwork and red tape. We can reduce errors while also removing some obstacles to eligible working families receiving food stamps. The nutrition title contains a number of reforms that the states have been calling for on a bipartisan basis, including restored eligibility to legal immigrants that play by the rules. In addition, the title adds funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program to help food banks and food pantries meet the needs they face. I would particularly like to thank Chairman Combest, Representative Goodlatte and Representative Clayton as well as all the members of the House Agriculture Committee for their work on this title. I am pleased that we have developed a title with strong bipartisan support believe that it will make concrete improvements in the nutrition safety net for low-income families. Of course, I know that most Members have not had the opportunity to pore over the dense legislative language of the nutrition title in detail. I therefore would like to take this opportunity to explain some of the key food stamp provisions on behalf of myself and Representative Clayton, the ranking member on the Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee, so that Members can have an idea how much this title has achieved and what an important component it is of this overall legislation. One of our top priorities in this legislation is to help low-income families make the transition from welfare to work. Significant research shows that many families that leave the TANF cash assistance program do not receive food stamps even though they have very low-incomes and remain eligible. The Urban Institute found that only 40 percent of families that leave welfare continue to receive food stamps. This has meant that hundreds of thousands of low-income families that worked their way off welfare, only to lose one of the most critical work supports available to them--food stamps, Food stamps can mean the difference between whether these families have enough income to put food on the table every day. It is in everyone's interest for these families' difficult transitions to be successful. A family is unlikely to regard its transition from welfare to work as a success if it cannot feed itself. This legislation offers states a new option called transitional food stamps that would eliminate food stamp paperwork requirements for those families leaving TANF. This should enhance the food stamp program's ability to support families moving from welfare to work. States can provide this new transitional benefit to any category of eligible household that they choose except certain households under sanction for misconduct. When a household leaves the state's cash assistance program, the state would simply recalculate their food stamp benefits without the cash benefits. This new amount would be the correct food stamp amount for all purposes and would be frozen for the next 5 months. There would be no contact between the state and the household at the beginning of the transitional period. Thus, the household would not have to comply with any procedural requirements to remain on the program. We would give states the flexibility to make this a transitional benefit a freeze or to make adjustments for changes they become aware of in other programs. These changes could include a cost of living adjustment in Social Security benefits or a newborn child whom the state is covering under Medicaid or SCHIP. Of course, states would always have to adjust for automatic changes in the food stamp program such as the Thrifty Food Plan or the standard deduction. As is always the case during a certification period, a household would retain the right to reapply to have its food stamps recalculated based on its current circumstances. Some households likely will experience major changes that render their transitional benefit amounts inadequate. These could include the loss of employment or the birth of a child. In these cases, the household may decide it is worth its while to go through the process of reapplying to have its benefits adjusted accordingly. I am very pleased that the nutrition title will make significant strides toward simplifying the food stamp program. This can only help states, eligibility workers, working poor families, and everyone else connected with the program. Last year, America's Second Harvest released a report entitled, ``The Red Tape Divide.'' This report detailed how long and complicated food stamp applications around the country are. Some of the problem is because some states have yet to take steps to simplify their applications. But another part of the problem is that federal food stamp rules require far too much detail from households on unimportant matters. This legislation provides states with several new options to streamline the food stamp program. These should result in less paperwork for those households already participating in the program as well as shorter food stamp applications. USDA should work with states to ensure that states are able to implement these provisions on the effective dates and need not wait for regulations. Arguably, the biggest impact will come from the provision allowing states to extend ``semiannual reporting'' to a broader group of households. Currently, states may only apply semiannual reporting to households with earnings. Semiannual reporting eliminates a household's reporting obligations for 6 months at a time unless its income rises the program's gross income limit. The household provides information once every 6 months and the state relies upon this snapshot to issue benefits for the next 6 months. This will significantly reduce paperwork and other administrative burdens on both participating households and state agencies. It directly responds to states' request to have more latitude within this option. This should encourage more states to adopt the option. It also should held align reporting rules among food stamps, TANF, and Medicaid. We encourage USDA to work with HHS to issue joint guidance on how states may use this new option to reduce overall reporting burdens for families as well as to better coordinate reporting requirements. For example, we are concerned that under the current option that when a household reports a change for the purposes of the Medicaid program it could threaten the household's receipt of food stamps. This could be true even though the household remains eligible for food stamps. That makes no sense. A household should not be at risk of losing its food stamps unless the state has reason to believe that the household is no longer eligible for food stamps. In crafting this proposal, we assume that the Department's major procedural rules for monthly reporting will apply to this option as well. For example, if a household files a late or incomplete semiannual report, it should be given an opportunity to supply the missing information. We were disappointed not to have found a way to reduce reporting burdens significantly for the elderly, the disabled and other groups excluded from periodic reporting. I hope USDA will explore options that could ease their reporting requirements for these households as well so that we can build upon this legislation's momentum. The bill allows states to align the definitions of income and resources in the food stamp program with the ones they apply in their Medicaid or TANF programs. Of course, the food stamp income and resource eligibility thresholds will remain, but these two provisions should give states sweeping new authority to eliminate unnecessary questions on their food stamp applications form about livestock, plasma sales state work study programs, individual retirement accounts, interest income, etc. We do include modest lists of items that states may not exclude under the new authority to conform. Obviously these lists are intended only to limit exclusions under the new paragraphs we are adding to the act. They do not affect exclusions under other paragraphs of sections 5(d) or (g). We urge the Secretary to add to these lists only where absolutely essential to ensure that food stamp benefits reasonably reflect need. Along with simplifying the reporting and counting of income, we also simplified the deductions states apply to determine households' incomes. The shelter deduction targets food stamp benefits to households that have the most trouble affording a nutritious diet because their incomes are so low they have little left over for food after paying their shelter costs. Households typically can deduct utility expenses in addition to their rent or mortgage, other payments they must make to get or keep ownership of their homes, fire insurance, and a few other costs. Since utility expenses vary so much from month to month, the program allows states to calculate households' utility costs with a fixed estimate, or standard utility allowance, in lieu of computing each household's particular utility bills. In welfare reform, we allowed states to require that all households's shelter deductions be calculated based on such a standard utility allowance or SUA. In this bill, we further simplify the SUA by allowing some states to eliminate some of the current restrictions on when households may claim it. This provision would apply if the state took the option from welfare reform to require household to use the standard instead of their actual utility bills. In these states, if a household can show that it has at least one utility bill, other than just a telephone bill, the household would receive the SUA. It would not matter if the household was doubled up with another family or individual. In recent years we have seen the utility costs households face soar in certain areas of the country because of various energy crises. I expect that these mandatory standards will be updated each year to reflect rising utility costs in the state. That will ensure that needy families do not have to choose between buying food for their families and paying their heat and other utility bills. I am pleased that we were able to craft this legislation so that the new simplification options can begin to make a difference soon. On several of them USDA is likely want to promulgate rules. States will not have to wait for USDA to do so, however, before implementing the new options. For example, they can conform their definitions of income and resources to those in TANF or Medicaid without waiting for USDA to promulgate regulations about the items that cannot be excluded in the name of conformity. Similarly, they can implement the provision allowing them to ignore most changes in households' deductions between certification periods without waiting for USDA to promulgate new regulations. They would, of course, still have to comply with existing USDA rules on when changes in earned income must be reflected in recalculated benefits. And, states would have to adjust benefits when a household elects to report that they have moved. The new rules, however, give states many options for minimizing the number of changes that require action. Freezing households' deductions is unlikely to cause significant hardship since the household can always reapply before the end of its certification period if a major rent increase, large new child care costs, or other deductible expenses render the household's current allotment inadequate. Despite Congress's best efforts over the years, child support payments are not always as regular as they ought to be. This has caused states concern about when they should anticipate that a household will make or receive a payment. We examined this question closely. Fortunately, a large part of the answer can be found in longstanding USDA regulations on anticipating income. Whether a state is determining gross income or net income, these regulations provide that it may only count amounts reasonably certain to be received during the month in question. Last year, USDA amplified these regulations with some extremely helpful guidance that also gave states new options for simplifying the treatment of child support payments that a household receives. This legislation builds upon that effort by extending the simplification to replace the deduction for child support payments made with an optional income exclusion. States now can exclude any legally obligated child support payments made by a household completely from income calculations. Thus, these potentially volatile payments need no longer be considered when applying the gross income eligibility limit. We did not mandate this change to avoid forcing states to undertake costly reprogramming of their computers purely to implement this provision. In addition, the legislation directs USDA to establish procedures that permit states to rely on information from the state child support enforcement agencies in calculating households' incomes. We expect USDA will allow states great flexibility to rely on older information that might otherwise be appropriate. States' child support enforcement agencies often have computers that do not mesh effectively with the systems states rely upon to calculate food stamps. The value of simplification in this area seems far more important than that of requiring the household to verify the most current possible information. Of course, a household that chooses to submit information about recent changes in its child support obligations or payments should receive whatever food stamps those changes justify. Finally, the legislation includes an experimental approach to providing food stamps to persons residing in certain kinds of institutions. Where a drug or alcohol rehabilitation center or similar facility would have served as the households' authorized representative anyway, the legislation allows states to provide a food stamp benefit directly to the home. As long as the claimant lived in the institution, the benefit would be calculated under a standardized formula that would not require the institution to gather a great deal of detail about the circumstances of each resident. These procedures only apply in facilities that qualify as institutions under USDA's rules. Those regulations correctly limit the definition of an institution to a place that provides the majority of meals to its residents over the course of a month. The new group home procedures would not apply to a facility that does not regularly provide most of each resident's meals. Also, we do not intend it to limit in any way the ability of victims of domestic violence or others that are capable of managing their own benefits to participate under regular food stamp rules. We certainly do not want to compound the tragedy of domestic violence by stripping a woman of her food stamps. This experiment should be a great convenience to centers as well as state agencies. In return for that convenience, we expect USDA and the states will require participating centers to have reliable systems for passing along notices to households and providing forwarding addresses to the state agency when a household moves. Residents leaving these centers in mid-month should not have to try to get by without adequate food assistance. Upon investigating a few of the Senate bill's simplification proposals, we were delighted to find that USDA's regulations already provide states the option to simplify the program. For example, I was pleased to learn that the current rules allow states to simplify the conversion of weekly and biweekly amounts of earned income deduction in the food stamp program if they have done so in TANF. Under this authority, Maryland multiplies weekly paychecks by four to calculate monthly income in both TANF and food stamps. Thus, we saw no need to adopt a Senate provision in this area that would have reduced the earned income deduction. Similarly, the Senate bill included a complicated provision that would have converted the food stamp recertification process into a redetermination system. Although this long has been a problem in the food stamp program, we discovered that recent changes USDA has made in its regulations address the major concerns. No one disputes the principle that a household should be able to receive food stamps continuously as long as it remains eligible. Also, no one intends that certification periods be so rigid as to create unnecessary burdens on either state agencies or households. On the other hand, we do believe it is important that states periodically confirm that a family in the food stamp program remains eligible just as they would for a family in any other on-going public benefit program. Recent USDA regulations give states broad flexibility to extend certification periods without going through recertification processes. They also allow states to undertake reviews in the middle of an unexpired certification period by sending a request for contact where the state knows an important change has occurred but does not have enough information to act on that particular change. In both instances, the key is eligibility rather than an arbitrary review schedule set months in advance. The transitional food stamp provisions in both USDA regulations and this legislation similarly avoid entrapment in rigid certification periods. The only question the Senate provision raised, then, was one of procedure. We preferred to maintain the one we had. Switching to a redetermination model would require states to undertake a costly reprogramming of their computers. It also could have allowed some inattentive eligibility workers to ignore review schedules and send food stamps to indisputably ineligible for many months. Not only did we seek to simplify by changing the program, we also sought to promote innovative approaches to simplification within the existing structure of the program. Each year, USDA will have a significant pool of money it can use to fund creative uses of the discretion states already have to ease access for low-income working families and others in need. For example, my state has pioneered centralized change reporting centers that ensure that someone is always available to receive a household's report of an increase or decrease in its monthly wages. I hope that USDA will use some of this money to fund efforts to create joint applications for food stamps, Medicaid, and other work supports for households that do not want to receive welfare. In this regard, USDA should not hesitate to fund a promising idea that would improve the food stamp program just because its benefits might spill over into other areas. Beyond these simplification provisions, we have made numerous other improvements in nutrition programs. We have streamlined the employment and training program to allow states easier access to these funds. This will give states flexibility to serve other groups of people that cannot receive employment and training services from other programs. For example, some households in which the parents are ineligible based on their immigration status might nonetheless be appropriate for food stamp employment and training assistance if some children in the household are getting food stamps. These children will benefit, and their need for food assistance will decline, if their parents can increase their earnings. Because this fund is limited, however, we have retained the current prohibition on spending these funds in ways that effectively supplant funding available through the TANF block grant. The Food Stamp Employment and Training Program should be the funder of last resort for these programs. We remain committed, however, to serving people subject to the three- month time limit. Unlike other applicants and recipients, these individuals cannot receive the food assistance they need unless they have the opportunity to work it off. The legislation requires USDA to give particular attention to this population when allocating the money among states. States that have elected to serve large numbers of unemployed childless adults should continue to have the resources to do so. This change will expand states' ability to provide employment and training services that do not meet the definition of a work activity in the part of the law creating the 3-month time limit. These could include routine unsupervised job search activities and training programs lasting less than twenty hours per week. Months spent in these activities usually will not count as months of work for purposes of the 3-month time limit, but they may nonetheless help the individuals in question find private-sector employment. States already have broad authority to decide how to coordinate these various employment-related requirements under the act. This change will give them the funding flexibility to take advantage of that authority. The conference report does not include Senate-passed provisions modifying the 3-month time limit. A major factor in this decision was our examination of the commonsense regulations USDA promulgated last year. We may want to revisit this provision of the law at some point in the future, but USDA reduced the urgency of that with the series of pragmatic and fair-minded choices it made. The final bill does, however, eliminate the current $25 cap on the amount states may reimburse E&T participants for expenses other than dependent care. This cap was unreasonably limiting states' flexibility in designing their own programs. We expect USDA will continue its longstanding policy of giving states broad flexibility in how they provide these funds to participants. With states paying half of the cost, we have no need to impose federal paperwork burdens on States and households. My own state of Texas was one of the first to issue food stamp benefits to households through electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, rather than paper coupons. The first generation of EBT contracts have begun to expire, and we are close to having a nationwide system of providing food stamp benefits via EBT. It therefore seems appropriate to take stock of the current system and some of the challenges that it present both to states and clients. This legislation requires USDA to issue a report on the current status of EBT. I am particularly interested in what information the Department can share on ensuring that claimants have full access to EBT systems and on ensuring that those systems fully meet their obligation to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. It is not acceptable to have eligible, needy individuals effectively denied food stamps because they lack the physical or mental skills necessary to use the equipment in a safe and reliable manner. The final bill does not include a Senate-passed provision to ensure that no households' EBT benefits are taken ``off-line'' or made inaccessible unless the household has left them idle for at least 6 months. I was comfortable with this decision because the Department has informed us that it is already planning to implement this policy via regulation. I am pleased that this legislation will restore eligibility to legal immigrants. We were very fortunate to work with the administration, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and many other members of Congress on this proposal. Legal immigrants' eligibility for food stamps was severely restricted in 1996, causing significant harm to these families. Many of these families contain poor citizen children who have left the food stamp program since the passage of the welfare law despite remaining eligible. We assume that this is because their parents have been confused about who in their family is eligible. This bill would restore eligibility to qualified low-income legal immigrant children regardless of their entry date into the United States. In addition, qualified legal immigrant adults who have lived in the United States for 5 or more years with that status also are eligible. We decided to make these adults subject to sponsor deeming because the rules USDA implemented last year strike us as a sensible, equitable approach to balancing our desire not to provide food stamps to families that are being supported by their sponsors with the program's purpose of getting food to those in need. We do not expect USDA to make any changes in this area. In particular, these families should not be subjected to any additional paperwork requirements that may prove difficult to meet if the sponsor is uncooperative. This restoration would bring food stamp policy for adults into conformity with the rules already in force in Medicaid and TANF. In each of the three programs, an adult becomes eligible for benefits 5 years after obtaining a qualified status. It does not matter if the immigrant at one time was granted one qualified status, such as asylum, and now has another, such as legal permanent residency. The 5 years begin to run from the time the immigrant first obtained qualified status. This conformity should make these rules much simpler for states to administer and for immigrants to understand. Finally, the legislation would allow legal immigrants receiving benefits under specified disability-based programs to qualify for food stamps. When we received cost estimates of this package from CBO and the administration on this proposal, neither projected any offsetting collections from sponsors as a result of immigrants receiving food stamps. This seems reasonable since so many low-income immigrants live with their sponsors. Over the years, Congress has consistently rejected proposals to require food stamp recipients to repay properly issued food stamp benefits. The OMB and CBO scores show that those agencies recognize that sponsor liability has never been intended as an end-run around that principle. No sponsor should incur a debt for food stamps that he or she receives along with the sponsored immigrants. The impact of this restoration would be compromised severely if eligible immigrants feared that their family members would be sent a bill as a result a their participation in the food stamp program. This scoring guided our thinking in how to draft the proposals. Certainly, we do not intend to encourage affluent sponsors to abdicate their responsibilities. But we also do not intend for low-income sponsors who are a part of the food stamp household or family unit to incur a liability as a result of their family's or household member's participating in the food stamp program. How could an aunt who is also her nephew's sponsor elect to enroll that child in food stamps if it would simply result in the aunt receiving a bill for the value of those food stamps? The bill also includes an important benefit improvement for all low- income households. The food stamp standard deduction, which operates like the standard deduction in the Tax Code, has been improved. First, the standard deduction will now be scaled to household size. Instead of a flat $134 deduction for all households, households will receive a deduction equal to 8.31 percent of that year's federal poverty guidelines. States must implement this provision by October 1, 2002. We understand that this effective date will represent a challenge for many states because it will require reprogramming their computer systems within a short period of time. We encourage USDA to work with states to provide some leeway for those states that are working diligently towards implementation but who may not be able to achieve the October 1 deadline. Of course, current law protect all states from quality control errors as a result of this provision for 6 months after the effective date. One of the most profound reforms to the food stamp program included in the bill is the new direction for the quality control system. There has been longstanding agreement amongst states, antihunger groups, and the administration that the quality control system needs to be reformed. The reforms included in this bill will ease federal-state relations and allow state administrators to adopt a balanced approach to program administration. Payment accuracy will remain essential, but not to the exclusion of the program's basic goals. While continuing the program's commitment to payment accuracy, the new formula will restrict sanctions to the worst offenders, as recommended by the National Academy of Science's review of the quality control system. The new system eliminates the feature of current law that puts about half of the states in sanction each year. This will allow USDA to focus its energies on states with persistent payment accuracy problems. Under the new system, the threshold for sanction is increased to exclude states with error rates very near the national average from fiscal penalties. In addition, states whose measured error rate may exceed the threshold only due to statistical uncertainty are exempt from sanction. Finally, no action is taken against states in the first year they exceed the threshold; these states are given an opportunity to improve their performance before they are subject to a penalty. If USDA determines with statistical confidence that a state has triggered a sanction by exceeding the threshold in a second consecutive year, USDA has three choices. First, it can require the state to reinvest up to 50 percent of the sanction to improve administration of the program. The legislation is deliberately open-ended about what kinds of program improvements can be the goals of reinvestment efforts. We believe each state is likely to be the best judge of what improvements it needs. Current USDA policy sensibly allows reinvestments seeking to improve program access as well as those that seek to improve payment accuracy. Second, USDA can designate up to 50 percent of state's potential liability to be held at risk. The state must pay moneys held at risk from the previous year if the state's error again is subject to sanction. If the state is not subject to sanction in the following year, the amount held at risk is automatically waived. Thus, the state would not pay any sanctions unless it exceeded the threshold for sanctions for the third consecutive year, determined again in a statistically reliable manner. USDA cannot collect sanctions during the year in which they are applied. Finally, USDA can waive any portion of the sanction amount. Any sanctions that are not reinvested or held at risk must be waived. USDA should consider the causes of the state agency's problems and whether the state's error rate is falling along with other relevant factors when determining how much to waive of a state's sanction to waive. Where the state is clearly on the road to correcting its problem, even a complete waiver may make sense. The final bill does not include an important feature of the Senate- passed bill, adjustments to sanctions for states doing a particularly good job of serving low-wage working families or immigrant households. Since 1998, USDA has adjusted the sanction liabilities of states to eliminate the impact of high or rising proportions of working poor households or low-income immigrants. Last year, the Department wrote to the states to assure them that it would continue to make these adjustments. USDA informs us that it has done so again with regard to states' error rates in fiscal year 2001. USDA reiterated to us its pledge to continue making these adjustments so that no state is thrown into sanction, or has its sanction increased, because it is serving a high or rising proportion of immigrants or earners. With USDA taking this action through its administrative authority, we saw no need to included in adjustments in the statutory changes to the system. I must confess to some nervousness about the timetable for implementing this new system. On the one hand, the current system would remain in place for the current fiscal year. I hope USDA will apply its broad discretion to waive the sanctions of states estimated to exceed the sanction threshold by small or statistically unreliable margins as these states would not be sanctioned under the new system. More significantly, under this legislation no state would be subject to automatic sanctions in fiscal year 2003, no matter how seriously and chronically it had failed to meet our payment accuracy goals. By extension, fiscal year 2004 could count as no more than a second year for states, even those with serious problems in 2002 and before. I fear this one-time relaxation in QC sanctions could lead to an unacceptable increase in the national payment error rate. None of us have any desire to yield back any of the hard-won gains of recent years. Neither our bill nor the Senate's provided for gaps of this nature. We adopted this timetable solely at the suggestion of the Department. We trust that the Department will use its broad authority to sanction ineffective or inefficient program administration in the case of any state whose payment accuracy performance during this transition is seriously flawed. The Department must bear the responsibility of ensuring that this lengthy transition that it has requested does not undermine the program's integrity. The legislation that gives USDA new authority to penalize those states that appeal their quality control error rate findings and that lose their appeal. This is provided to ensure that USDA is not barraged with patently frivolous appeals. Since states cannot be made fully whole for reinvested moneys that ultimately are found not to be owning, a state with a good faith dispute over a sanction could reasonably wait to begin reinvestment until its appeal is resolved. USDA should not deny these states the opportunity to reinvest any sanctions ultimately found due. The bill also replaces the current system of enhanced funding for states with extremely low error rates with a system of high performance bonuses. The criteria upon which USDA awards these bonuses should reflect a balanced picture of the goals of state administration of the program. Payment accuracy is an important part of that system, but so are complying with the law's application processing deadlines and its requirements to make food assistance accessible to those in need. Measures focusing on administrative service, such as timeliness and denying only those applicant households that are ineligible, should be a significant portion of the bonus package. By requiring USDA to consult with states in developing its system of bonus payments, we by no means intend to suggest that USDA may exclude academics, claimants' advocates, and others from its consultations on this issue. In conclusion, with this legislation, Congress will improve benefits for many of our nation's neediest families and accomplish historic simplification of the food stamp program, better enabling states to serve working families with this critical work support. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Holden), who has been a valued member of the conference that helped us bring us to this point.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time, other than my closing on the floor.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton). (Mrs. CLAYTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)