Agricultural Disaster Assistance and Western States Emergency Unfinished Business Appropriations Act, 2007

Floor Speech

AGRICULTURAL DISASTER ASSISTANCE AND WESTERN STATES EMERGENCY UNFINISHED BUSINESS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (House of Representatives - May 10, 2007)

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Mr. SIMPSON. I appreciate the gentleman yielding time, and I appreciate the leadership of the ranking member from California on this committee.

Mr. Speaker, one of the difficulties we often have is you are tasked if you are a member of the party of the administration to sometimes defend the administration. But sometimes the administration, quite frankly, does things that are undefendable. If you read the statement of administration policy and what they would do and why they would veto this bill, I have got to tell you, I believe it is undefendable.

I want to thank Chairman Obey for recognizing that even in a time of war, not all emergencies are war-related, that unanticipated circumstances occur that require our attention. Unanticipated floods and droughts and hurricanes occur that require our attention. Unanticipated wildfires occur that require our attention. Unanticipated actions that are taken that would impact our county schools and road budgets need to be taken into account.

If you read the administration's statement of administration policy, I want to read from it, if I could.

The Office of Management and Budget, Statement of Administration Policy.

The administration strongly supports efforts to increase opportunities for America's farmers and ranchers in rural communities. However, H.R. 2207 would allow almost $7 billion in unrequested spending that is unjustified and not appropriate for an emergency spending bill.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that if you look at the funding in this bill, it is exactly what emergency spending is for. As an example, if you look at what we have done in the agricultural section of this bill; we have had droughts, we have had problems in the agricultural community. And while the administration talks about how good the ag economy is and how good the 2001 farm bill worked, and that the ag economy is up like $16 billion in income this year, the fact is that, in isolated cases and in isolated situations, you have disasters, you have floods, you have droughts. We have a responsibility to help those people. That's what an emergency is. I don't think the administration recognizes that.

When you have wildfires that occur throughout this country that are more than we anticipate, and if you will look at the news any given night, wildfires are occurring now in California and other places, we have to put out those wildfires. If we don't, the costs grow and become enormous.

If you look at the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, I don't know if most people understand what that is. Counties used to get a part of the timber sales to help fund their roads and their schools. Timber sales were being reduced so much that those funds were drying up and it was affecting those counties that were predominantly rural counties and had many public lands in them. Mr. Thompson said he has one that is 80 percent Federal land. I've got one that is 96 percent Federal land.

What we did was we put this into place 10 years ago. The problem was it said that we will wean the schools off of this and find a way to replace those funds. How do you replace those funds if you are a county that is 96 percent Federal land? You have no private land for taxes. How are they going to find the resources to replace that funding?

So we did it in the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. Now, the administration says they have come up with a perfectly reasonable alternative to fund this, an offset, if you will. They want to sell public lands. They proposed that last year, selling nearly 250,000 acres in Idaho. The people of this country stood up and rejected that idea. The people of this country do not want to willy-nilly sell public lands.

We have a responsibility, when the Federal Government owns an overwhelmingly majority of public lands in a lot of the western States, 64 percent in Idaho, we have a responsibility to help those counties with some of the funds where they don't have the tax base to address these needs themselves. Otherwise, you are going to have schools that, quite frankly, don't have a budget next year. Is it an emergency? Can we wait until 2008? I don't think so. They start school before that, and we have to address it.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the administration is trying to address the deficit, but to suggest that these needs are nonemergency, that we should be able to anticipate them, I think is just wrong.

I hope my colleagues will vote for this bill. And again, I thank the chairman of the committee. I thank the ranking member of the committee for the work that they do. It is always difficult when you are trying to address both the deficit and the needs of this country, and they do a very, very good job of it.

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