Farr Floor Statement on Agriculture Appropriations Act

I rise having cosponsored this bill as the ranking member on the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. I have to say that I think we have worked very well together. We have worked together as chair and ranking member over a period of time. It is an interesting perspective. I think we have crossed the cultural divide when a Californian can understand the language of an Alabaman, and we have become friends.

   I have to say that probably 90 percent of this bill is something we all agree on. Ten percent is what we don't agree on, and it is a horrible 10 percent--a big 10 percent. The bill allocates $20.8 billion, which is the same as what we came up with last year in the conference level.

   I appreciate the working relationship that Mr. Aderholt already outlined and the wonderful staff that both his office and I have, and my office and the committee has. We all work well together as a team. So we bring this bill to the floor today.

   It is quite a privilege to be able to have this position, and I think that we all understand the privilege, because the USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is our main focus, in addition to the Food and Drug Administration, and to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of Agriculture, many people don't understand, was created during the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln. It was a department that needed to be created as the United States was facing the Western expansion. Abraham Lincoln was very insightful in realizing that people who moved out into the boonies needed help. There is no infrastructure there. There is nothing there. It became kind of a home ec department. And to this day, the Department of Agriculture still has a division of rural water, a division of rural housing, farmworker housing, and of rural telecommunications.

   It is obviously involved with all the science research in agriculture and a big research section. The USDA has a specialist in almost every county in the United States and almost every country in the world, as we have ag advisers in all of our Embassies.

   It is an awesome responsibility to govern a very complex system of trade and balances, of phytosanitary inspections, of fighting diseases that get into this country. And it is a lot of fun, also, and I think that is why we get along well trying to put together a good bill.

   Now, I voted against this bill in committee because of the concerns of several aspects. Among these concerns are two highly objectionable nutrition riders. I am really concerned that the bill would allow school food authorities to get waivers from complying with the improved lunch and breakfast nutrition standards in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which we enacted in 2010. The bill would allow them to get waivers if they show they are operating at a net loss.

   I believe that rather than going backwards and serving children in some schools less healthy meals, we should be encouraging the USDA to continue giving schools the technical assistance they need to meet the standards. We should also be encouraging USDA to continue providing flexibility, where warranted, in meeting nutritional standards. The approach in this bill, however, is unacceptable.

   Second, despite the recommendations of the medical community indicating that consumption of starchy vegetables meets or exceeds recommended amounts, and the food in-take data showing that white potatoes are the most widely used vegetables and therefore by law or by statute have been excluded from the WIC program, where you get vouchers to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, this bill allows white potatoes to be purchased under that program. It is not necessary at all. The white potato lobby is a very effective lobby.

   I am troubled by the inclusion of this bill requiring white potatoes be eligible for purchase in the WIC program. The WIC program, as I said, gives supplemental nutrition through specified foods, and white potatoes is not one of them. So there are some real concerns with this bill. This is the first time that Congress has dictated as to what has to be purchased with those vouchers, and we have never before mandated an inclusion of a specific food item in the WIC food package in the history of the program.

   While the funding levels in this bill are, in general, acceptable, there are some exceptions. The most notable to that is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This is a Commission that reviews about $300 trillion in trade. That is almost $1 trillion a day. And what we do is provide funding to have the referees so that they know when the trading is being fair or not fair, and it is essentially a review process, but they need money to hire those referees, as we call them. The President asked for $62 million more than we are allowing him to have to fill the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Those are big concerns.

   On the positive side, the bill restores the Food for Peace funding to 2014 levels. It increases the McGovern-Dole program by $13 million over the 2014 levels. But I am also concerned that in these programs there is an exclusion of important reforms that would have furthered the impact of each dollar spent on food aid.

   Given the high level of need, our food aid has to be as cost effective and as efficient as possible, so I am disappointed that food aid reforms enabling more people to be fed at lower cost were not included in the bill.

   I would like to say that you are going to hear a lot of my colleagues raise issues on some of these issues because it is very important that we try to get it right and hopefully defeat some of the bad provisions that are in this bill.

   Food is peace. America leads the world in food assistance. California is the number one agriculture State in the Union. I am proud to be the ranking member in bringing this bill to the floor for healthy debate.