Lowey statement on 2017 Agriculture Appropriations bill

I thank Chairman Aderholt, Ranking Member Farr, and Chairman Rogers for their work on this bill. 

Today, the Committee will mark up its second and third bill of the year.  Meanwhile, after Republican Leadership maintained that the budget and appropriations process would return to regular order and adhere to last year’s bipartisan agreement, the House has not passed a budget, and it’s almost certain we never will.

We know why.  The right-wing is threatening to renege on the bipartisan budget agreement, and rejects as insufficiently radical, a Republican budget resolution that would devastate good-paying jobs, end the Medicare guarantee, and increase poverty.  The majority’s continued dysfunction jeopardizes this Committee’s ability to meet the challenges we face. 

As for this Committee, it is unacceptable that we continue to proceed without complete and transparent subcommittee allocations.  This path will likely starve the bills at the end of the process, risking crucial investments in education, infrastructure, our first responders, and more. 

Just last week, the Full Committee marked up the Military Construction/VA bill with a considerable increase, and without knowing that today we’d face the choice of shortchanging a number of national priorities, including the safety and quality of our food supply, rural development and healthy meals for children, commodities regulation and approval of potentially life-saving medicines in an agriculture appropriations bill $451 million below current levels.

While its increases for the FDA and stable funding for Food for Peace are positive, reductions to school kitchen equipment grants and the Summer EBT program in effect takes healthy foods out of the mouths of hungry kids. 

This Subcommittee’s lack of focus on the needs of the CFTC, which protects small businesses, family farms, and ordinary investors from improper business dealings, is concerning.

But most concerning are the contentious policy provisions, which have no place in an appropriations bill, delay our ability to address national priorities that improve the health and safety of Americans, and jeopardize our ability to move all 12 bills. Riders on tobacco and genetically modified organisms shouldn't be in this bill, especially when the science is clear that cigars are bad for public health and the verdict is still out on GMOs.  These egregious riders should be at the bottom of the priority list with so many urgent challenges.

Chief among these urgent challenges is responding to the Zika virus, where Congress continues to dither while the emergency gets more serious by the day.  Since our last markup, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed that Zika is a cause of microcephaly and other brain defects in infants.  I beg the majority to heed the words of Republican Senator Marco Rubio: “I hope that opposition to the fund request will change because I can tell you once these cases start popping up in other states around the country, people are going to have to explain to their constituents why we stood by and did nothing.”

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with each of you to meet these needs and to improve the bill before us today.