Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2744, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2744, AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 08, 2005)
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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding me the time, and I rise in strong support of the rule and the underlying legislation.
The Agriculture appropriations bill is being considered under an open rule that allows all Members to offer their amendments to this important piece of legislation, and I believe that all Members should be able to support this rule.
I commend the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Bonilla) and the other members of his committee for their work on this very important legislation. I would like to highlight a few of the provisions of particular importance to my district of West Virginia.
Resource conservation and development councils across the country, including the Potomac Headwaters and Little Kanawha councils in my district, leverage very successfully Federal, State and local money with private sector dollars to support conservation and economic development activities in our rural communities. I think it is important to note that anytime a successful collaboration between all of the different governmental entities and private sector dollars is able to achieve results that we should recognize that, and I am pleased that this bill does so.
These local councils have years of experience with development and conservation issues and understand the needs of our home areas. The heartfelt letters and phone calls that I receive from constituents and community leaders across West Virginia demonstrate the good work that RC&D councils are doing. I thank the Committee on Appropriations for rejecting the plan to end the Resource Conservation and Development program and instead fully fund the local councils at last year's level.
Also, I want to thank the committee for restoring formula funds for the Hatch Act, the McIntire-Stennis program, and the Animal Health Disease program and rejecting proposals to turn these funds into competitive grants.
West Virginia University has a very successful extension service that does an outstanding job of researching problems facing farmers in my State and across the Nation. Every State has an extension service devoted to solving agriculture programs in their local areas.
Switching to a competitive grant system would have jeopardized the ability of local extension services to deal with local plant disease or animal health problems.
This appropriations bill also provides a $630 million increase for the Child Nutrition program. In West Virginia, my home State, 145,000 children received free or reduced school lunches this past year. That is more than half of our State's K through 12 total enrollment. It is important that we maintain this funding for this important program.
For these reasons and many others, I think it is extremely important that not only do we pass the rule but we also pass the good hard work of the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, and their efforts to preserve and enrich the programs that are feeding not only our country but other countries and developing the research to find other ways to maximize our resources.
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