Extending Government Funding and Delivering Emergency Assistance Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5305. Keeping our government funded and functioning is a basic responsibility of the Congress. This is must-pass legislation.

Passage will give time to finalize the fiscal year 2022 funding bills without a government shutdown, and we should get that done as soon as possible. As chairman of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, I want to highlight several items in our jurisdiction.

First, the bill includes $10 billion for agricultural disaster assistance programs to cover events in 2020 and 2021. It includes $275 million for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program to help communities address damages caused by natural disasters that impair the watersheds.

Moreover, it ensures USDA can continue to help expand economic opportunity, create jobs in rural areas, and fully meet the demand for farm ownership loans. And it provides the authority and funding to allow the Food and Nutrition Service to increase the amount of fruits and vegetables in the WIC Food Package, increasing nutrition security at a time when food insecurity is rampant across our country.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the committee staffs on both the Appropriations and the Agriculture Committees. I want to thank Chair DeLauro, the ranking member, and the committee members for their dedicated work on the many difficult issues addressed in this bill.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill and keep the government open so that the programs meant to help America grow economically and recover from natural disasters can continue to help people all across this country.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source