Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2007
AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding me time.
Mr. Chairman, as a member of this subcommittee for many years, I would like to point out that everyone of the projects that is included in this bill is carefully monitored and with the proposals being reviewed on campuses before they are submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for funding. Then the U.S. Department of Agriculture reviews each project to be sure that the projects are ones of scientific merit, and research contracts are effectively negotiated between the USDA and the recipient.
And the subcommittee monitors each one of the projects with detailed questions at every hearing. This is the most recent hearing manual with each of the amendments that the gentleman is offering about. There is careful review. There are quarterly reports. There is documentation that is required for every single project.
So I do not quite agree with what the gentleman has said, because it is a contract negotiation and because there is careful review and a lot of projects do not get funded. The gentleman mentioned something about 400 projects. Well, we have 435 Members of this institution.
And we do have a responsibility to the country. There are projects in Arizona. There are projects in Ohio. And we cannot fund everything that we are asked, but we do the best job that we can, and we try and make and build a better country.
So the specifics, the gentleman had a question about I think the greenhouse nurseries projects in Ohio. And I can assure the gentleman that the unsubsidized family farmers of Ohio in this particular industry are competing in a global market. And the work that is being done by several land grant universities, including Ohio State University, Michigan State University, Indiana State University, are trying to help an endangered industry compete against subsidized Canadian production where power in that nation is made available at much cheaper rates.
The power costs of operating these kinds of greenhouses is enormous in the current marketplace. I only wish that our region of the country had what the gentleman has, and that is the Bureau of Land Reclamation, and your subsidized water projects in the west that have literally pulled much of our vegetable production from nonirrigated facilities to the irrigated west.
I wish we had the kind of subsidies the gentleman's region has benefited from. Perhaps because the gentleman lives in a suburb, he does not appreciate what it takes to produce food in our country with the kind of competition that we face.
Now I read in the gentleman's biography that he grew up on a ranch. I sure would like to know if your family benefited from any of those Bureau of Land Management subsidies or any of those Arizona water projects. Maybe the gentleman gets his water from the rain. I do not know. But, you know, other parts of America need to compete, too, and they are not subsidized.
So we hope that our industry will be able to survive. But I would defend any of the projects that have gone through this careful review through the U.S. Department of Agriculture along with many of our land grant institutions.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman to take a look in the mirror and to his own State.
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I would like to join my dear colleague from Ohio (Mrs. Schmidt) in saying that aquaculture is a growing business in Ohio. We want to keep all of our communities competitive.
I would say to the gentleman from Arizona, Ohio is really a shrimp in this. Arizona has a $4.2 million aquaculture designation in this bill. So we are really a shrimp compared to Arizona with your subsidized water and your Bureau of Land Reclamation incentives for your folks out there.
But I can tell you, when I was born we had 146 million people in this country. Today we have 300 million. The oceans are half depleted in fish. And the Great Lakes are in great competition with Canada. We have to put caps on what our commercial fishermen can fish. And this project has resulted in a 30 percent increase in juvenile perch, one of the most desired fish in the region. So we need more fish. The oceans are not providing. We have to do our job here. Life is important. Being competitive in the international aquaculture environment is important. And the gentleman's own State, though it costs more to do it there because you have all those irrigation costs, we are trying to do it using fresh water. I think this is a wonderful investment by the American people in their own self-interest.
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to put on the record that the State of Ohio used to be one of the leading tomato-growing States in the Nation until subsidized western water, and we lost our industry to the West.
Now, Arizona is one of the most irrigated States in the country. You are draining water that is never going to come back. And yet I look at our part of the country that has to fight for such a small part of the market right now. I would just ask the gentleman, I would love to look at the type of subsidies that attend to your agriculture in Arizona from major government agencies that do not come to Ohio farmers.
We are trying to maintain a very small market share. Hydroponic production is one of the ways in which we are successfully doing it, but I would just beg for the gentleman to take a look at what has really happened to the movement of agriculture. One State in the Union now produces over half the fruits and vegetables in the country, most of it irrigated. Ohioans have a right to compete in this market.
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say this may be the first year America imports more food than she exports. This is not just a problem inside the borders of the United States. We have to keep our agriculture alive in this country, and it is becoming more and more difficult every year because of what is happening in the global economy and subsidies that are out there in other countries. Thank you for yielding.
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy, since we are on opposite sides in this debate this evening. But I wanted to follow on something Mr. Obey said, because I used to work for a former President in the United States and I understand quite a bit about the way OMB operates.
One of the most shocking things I learned as a White House staff member was that you might have somebody in front of you who was the OMB examiner on agriculture this year, and then next year they switch that person to defense or switch them out to another agency, and you find out they do not know the details about anything.
I was shocked that the defense examiners at OMB have nowhere near the experience that the Members of this institution do, and this is really where historical memory and where experience in detail rests.
So I would agree with the gentleman from Wisconsin, we need a lot more sunlight over there on the executive side. We have total sunlight over here. And I have a totally different impression of the OMB as a former White House staff member than I ever did before, when I used to hold them in very high esteem until I realized they did not know the details of many programs. They just shifted them around, and they did not have the kinds of commitment and depth of knowledge that Members of Congress do.
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