Ranking Member Bishop Statement at Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request for the Department of Agriculture Hearing

Congressman Sanford Bishop (D-GA-2), Ranking Member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee's fiscal year 2025 budget request hearing for the Department of Agriculture:

Thank you for yielding Mr. Chairman.

It is good to see you again, Mr. Secretary.

You were very kind to spend as much time as you did last month with the House Agriculture Committee.

It was a very cordial and informative session.

I trust that today’s hearing will be also.

The agriculture appropriations bill is essential – I repeat, essential – to the food security of people at home and abroad and to the American farmers who feed them.

Before we look ahead to fiscal year 2025 though, I think it is worth revisiting the work of this committee for fiscal year 2024.

Last year’s process started with a House bill in whose development the Democrats were given absolutely no input.  None.

I assure you that as chairman, when I chaired the committee, I did not treat the Republican minority that way.

It was not the way this Committee normally does business and – after a long list of culture war riders were added to the bill – it ended with the bill’s defeat on the floor.

None of that had to happen.

And I am happy, however, that, in the end, we were able to come together and pass a bipartisan agreement. Those negotiations ended where they had to: without harmful, extraneous policy riders and with funding levels which reflect the bipartisan agreement on 2024 spending.

None of us may have gotten everything we wanted, but compromise is rarely easy and, by making crucial investments like fully funding the WIC program, I believe the fiscal year 2024 bill we passed this month moves us in a positive direction.

I believe that both the majority and the minority, Democrats and Republicans on this committee and in the Congress, have much more in common than we have differences.

I believe that we all want to make sure that American agriculture remains secure. And we want to all make sure that there is equity and opportunity for agriculture and rural communities. We all, I think, want to make sure that we have policies that add value to all of our farmers, large and small.

I think we all agree that we want to rebuild Rural America and we want to have an adequate USDA staff to do that.

We want to have affordable housing in our rural communities. We want to have healthcare in our rural communities. We want to have safe water and safe water systems.

We want a farm loan program that works for all of our producers. We want better markets for our producers, at home and abroad.

And certainly, I think we all agree that we want adequate and innovative research so that we can continue, in America, to produce the highest quality, the safest, the most abundant, and the most affordable food and fiber anywhere in the industrial world.

That is why I hope we can start the process this year on a more productive, bipartisan path for 2025.

The business of this subcommittee is not partisan. It is not Republican, and it is not Democrat. It is American.

All of us want, I think, want to make sure that we do and meet our responsibilities to the American people, now and in preparation for the future.

So, Mr. Secretary, I find hope in a statistic which you have mentioned in your testimony – that fifty-five counties which were previously categorized as persistently poor have left that list, a number of them in my own congressional district.

That improvement in the lives of the people in those counties is testament to the fact that the Agriculture, Rural Development, and FDA appropriations bill offers a way out of poverty for many in rural America.

Our bill also offers clean drinking water, affordable rental housing, and energy assistance. And it provides funding for our land-grant institutions so that American agriculture stays on the cutting edge of research and combats hunger both domestically and abroad.

So, I am pleased to see that the budget request, if funded, makes strong investments to support our rural businesses; to feed our women, infants, and children; and to keep our farmers farming in both rural and urban areas.

The budget before us underscores the impact of the agriculture appropriations bill on all Americans to ensure that we continue to provide the safest, and most abundant, and highest quality, and most affordable food in the world.

And for the Department to get this important work done, this budget recognizes the need for bolstering staffing. We know that USDA will need additional staffing support to implement the Farm Bill programs that we hope to see reauthorized this year.

Finally, the budget request reflects the growing demand for WIC funding as participation continues to rise. For fiscal year 2025, we must once again rise to meet this critical funding need.

I think this is a solid and, in many ways, a very innovative budget.

Once again, I thank you for being here Mr. Secretary, and I look forward to hearing your ideas on how we can continue to build upon the investments that this committee and our federal government continues to make in American agriculture communities and in rural America.

Thank you very much. And with that, I yield back.

###