Interior, Environment, Financial Services, and General Government Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am glad to be here following my colleague who is the ranking member of the subcommittee and who has done such excellent work, as well as with the Senator from Alaska, in undertaking and really bringing together a vision for their subcommittee that we have needed on this floor for a long time--well done.

I stand here as the ranking member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. I am very pleased to be able to pass this bill today--or we will hopefully soon do so--with strong bipartisan support. Appreciation to the chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Hoeven, and his excellent Appropriations Committee team, including Carlisle Clarke, Elizabeth Dent, Patrick Carroll, and Carlos Elias. They worked hand in hand with my team of Dianne Nellor, Jessica Schulken, Bob Ross, and Teri Curtin. I came to the floor the other day to speak to the excellent work Jessica Schulken has done over her career, serving for nearly two decades on the committee and just being a powerful, intelligent, persuasive, and insightful force in agricultural policy. I think, together, we have produced a very good bill. It provides funding for programs that are important to every American in every community, from the smallest rural town to the biggest city. And we rejected draconian cuts proposed in the President's budget.

Some of the essential items that we find in the Ag appropriations bill include rural development, which is very important to my State and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--we have so much going on in our rural towns. It is important to fund our rural business, rural utility service, and rural broadband. Rural business and rural broadband, by the way, were zeroed out by the President and faced draconian cuts. I am so pleased we were able to reach a bipartisan decision to support these rural development programs.

We also support nutrition for Americans. In our country, there is no reason Americans should be going hungry.

We also maintain international assistance, which largely means buying American food and shipping it overseas to places in the world that are desperate. I had the chance to visit some of those areas in Africa and see firsthand how important our contribution to the World Food Program is.

Our environmental programs assist farmers in the stewardship of the land. It is something they have in their hearts, and it is helpful to have the EQIP program and the NRCS to support them.

The Agricultural Research Service is essential and so important to the great diversity of crops we have in my State and the unending list of potential pests, problems, and diseases that occur. We have to continue that research. I recently visited, for example, a wheat research station, and it was fascinating to see. From a distance, you would say: Well, that is just another field of wheat; what could be the issues? Well, it turns out there are all kinds of important issues that require agricultural research. Then there is risk management for our farmers and having that structure to support them so they aren't wiped out in rough times.

It has been a pleasure to work on this subcommittee and to see the broader Appropriations Committee returning to regular order, bringing bills to the floor, having a chance for all Senators to have a say in the process. So here we are in a better place, and I hope it is a course that we can continue. Recognition of the Minority Leader

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