Providing For Consideration Of Conference Report On H.R. 2997, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food And Drug Administration, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.
Floor Speech
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 799 provides for consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2997, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010. The rule waives all points of order against the conference report on H.R. 2997 and against its consideration, and the rule provides that the previous question shall be considered as ordered without intervention of any motion except one hour of debate and one motion to recommit, if applicable.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference report for the fiscal year 2010 Agriculture Appropriations conference report. This is a good bill, one that went through the regular order. It is, in fact, the third appropriations conference report that this body will consider this year. I want to especially commend Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro and Ranking Member Jack Kingston, as well as the other subcommittee members, for their efforts in completing this bill.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is one that normally doesn't get a lot of attention but, in reality, is one of the most important bills that we can pass. I wish the allocation, Mr. Speaker, for this bill, quite frankly, was higher than it is because there is a great need for the programs that make up this bill. This conference report funds the following areas at the Department of Agriculture: public health programs, rural communities, agriculture research, animal health and marketing programs, and conservation. Most importantly, this bill funds domestic and international antihunger and nutrition programs, programs that literally put food in the mouths of hundreds of millions of hungry people here at home and around the world.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is $2.7 billion more than last year and $325 million more than the President's request, a 13 percent increase over last year's bill. Following my opening statement, we will hear from my friends on the other side, and I expect that they will talk about how this bill spends too much money and that this increase is simply unnecessary, especially during these difficult economic times.
Well, Mr. Speaker, this increase is needed now more than ever. Just look at where the increases in this bill are targeted: to the areas of nutrition, international food assistance, and food and drug safety. Simply, these increases go to protect our food supply and to provide food for those who either cannot afford it or do not have access to it. It is unconscionable to me that anyone can complain about helping people in need during these tough economic times.
Today, there are over 36 million low-income individuals who rely on the SNAP program, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. The sad fact is that this is a record number of people who are currently relying on this safety net program. This bill provides over $58 billion for the SNAP program, an increase of more than $4 billion from 2009.
WIC is funded at $7.2 billion, an increase of almost $400 million. This increase will provide up to 9.6 million women, infants, and children help with a healthy pregnancy and a healthy start in life.
The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, a program that provides nutritious food to low-income women, infants, children, and elderly citizens who all struggle with rising food costs, is funded at $171 million. That is $11 million more than 2009 and $9 million more than the President's request.
Finally, the Child Nutrition Programs, school meals and snacks, receive almost $17 billion, $1.9 billion above the 2009 levels.
Hunger is a real problem in America, and this bill provides funding that keeps the safety net intact. Look at one of the more affluent areas in this country, Fairfax County in Virginia. According to a recent Washington Post article, Fairfax churches and nonprofit organizations report a 39 percent increase in food assistance in the fourth quarter of 2008 when compared with the fourth quarter of 2007. Let me repeat that, a 39 percent increase. ``Almost half of the respondents reported helping families that had never asked for aid before, many of them former middle class residents now unemployment or facing foreclosure.'' I will insert this article into the Record at the end of my statement.
Mr. Speaker, this is just one example of how hunger is creeping into areas of the country that are not used to seeing hunger. Food banks, WIC clinics, and SNAP processors are the ones providing food for people who simply cannot make ends meet. Yet some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we cannot afford to properly fund these programs, insinuating that we should turn our backs on these people who are in desperate need.
I, for one, make no apologies for these increases in food and nutrition programs. We have a moral obligation to step up to the plate to help the most vulnerable people during these difficult times.
Internationally, the need is just as great. This bill provides critical funding for the Food for Peace program and McGovern-Dole Food for Education program. Overall, there is $1.89 billion provided for international food aid programs. That is an increase of $564 million over 2009.
The P.L. 480 Food for Peace Title II grants program receives $1.69 billion, which is $464 million above 2009. And a program close to my heart, the McGovern-Dole program, is more than doubled from the previous year. In 2010, this important program will receive $209.5 million, $10 million more than President Obama's request and $109.5 million more than 2009 levels.
Mr. Speaker, for too long this country has underfunded international food and nutrition programs. This bill is changing that course. We are putting more money up front for development, providing assistance before it becomes an emergency that we and the rest of the world have to respond to. This is appropriate and necessary, and I applaud Chairwoman DeLauro for working to right the misguided policies of the previous administration. I would add that investing in food and nutrition programs overseas and investing in smart development is in our national security interests. Taking a global leadership role in combating hunger and fighting global poverty I think is something that wins us the hearts and minds of people all over the world, and I want to again commend Chairwoman DeLauro for her leadership.
I am also pleased that there is more than $33 million for eradication of the Asian longhorn beetle, an increase of more than $13 million over last year. This funding will help USDA in their efforts to help in identifying and eradicating the infestation of this pest. While more funding is needed, and I will be asking the USDA for additional emergency funding for this effort, the funding included in this bill is welcome and I appreciate its inclusion.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to address the tragic bombing of the United Nations World Food Program offices in Islamabad, Pakistan. The World Food Program benefits from the international food aid programs that are funded in this bill. WFP is an excellent partner and is on the front lines of many of the efforts to combat hunger and starvation around the world. Josette Sheeran and everyone at WFP do an excellent job, and I am pleased to be able to work with them as they work to end hunger around the world.
I want to convey my deepest condolences and sympathies to the family and friends and colleagues of the WFP staff who were killed in Pakistan. My thoughts and prayers are also with those who were wounded and injured in the bombing attack, and we hope for their full recovery. The bombing underscores the often dangerous situations in which the World Food Program and so many other humanitarian relief workers find themselves. And I, for one, can only thank them for their important and too often unrecognized service to humanity.
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2009]
Whole Foods to Food Banks
(By Annie Gowen)
The Germantown woman was loading boxes of food from the Manna food bank into a shiny sport-utility vehicle one recent afternoon when she was approached by a donor dropping off food.
``What group are you with?'' the donor asked the woman, who promptly burst into tears. With her Toyota Sequoia and quilted Vera Bradley bag, she had been mistaken for a volunteer--rather than a client waiting to take home a bag of potatoes.
``I'm a mother of four just trying to feed my kids,'' the woman sobbed to the donor, who was taken aback, then sympathetic.
Such awkward scenes are playing out frequently at food pantries and other charities across the region as they struggle to help the still upward-spiraling number of formerly middle-class people knocking on their doors.
For the charities, the surge in demand has tested their resourcefulness--and sometimes their patience. Not only must they stock millions of pounds of additional food in bigger warehouses, but they also must adopt fresh tactics to help the newly needy, who can be more bewildered, more emotional and more selective than their traditional clients.
One intake volunteer at Food for Others in Fairfax County, for example, has learned that the formerly affluent won't wait outside in line for food at evening neighborhood giveaways, lest they be spotted.
``We have more people than ever coming here thinking they'd never ever be here,'' said Amy Ginsburg, executive director of Manna Food Center in Montgomery County. Manna, along with most food area pantries, requires people to prove by income that they need assistance.
The group is moving into a 12,000-square-foot warehouse in Gaithersburg on Oct. 5 to meet the growing need. Manna gave away 3.1 million pounds of food to 102,519 Montgomery County residents last fiscal year, up from 2.1 million pounds the year before. They've increased food drives, and cash donations have kept pace.
Manna's workers and volunteers try to make the experience as dignified as possible for everyone, helping clients load their cars and handing out juice boxes and pretzels to families waiting in increasingly longer lines. On a recent morning, residents dressed in pressed khakis waited for boxes of fresh produce, meat and canned goods alongside those in dirty T-shirts.
``Not having enough money for food is a bizarre, foreign experience'' for the new needy, Ginsburg explained. ``They're still getting over the shock.''
Ginsburg and others running local charities expect the number of residents seeking help to continue to rise even as the economy improves. Jobless numbers are increasing, they point out, while severance checks and unemployment benefits are running out.
Fairfax found in a recent survey of 89 churches and nonprofit organizations that 32,044 households received food assistance in the last quarter of 2008, a 39 percent increase from the previous year's fourth quarter. Almost half of the respondents reported helping families that had never asked for aid before--many of them former middle-class residents now unemployed or facing foreclosure.
Wanda Moloney, client relations manager at Loudoun Interfaith Relief, which served 56,000 residents last year, said her group gives food to 100 new families a week. Increasingly, Interfaith volunteers from some of Loudoun's most affluent neighborhoods find themselves packing boxes for their friends and neighbors.
Nobody knows what to say.
``You can see it in the eye contact,'' Moloney said. ``The tears say it all.''
Barbara Curtis, 61, said that the experience of getting groceries from the food pantry was ``startling at first.'' She and her husband, Tripp, lost their sprawling Loudoun home this year after he became ill and was unable to work. With five children at home, their descent from a comfortable middle-class life seemed to happen overnight. ``It really let me see how vulnerable we all are,'' Curtis said.
Terry Wilson, 43, a floral designer, also sought help in Loudoun after he was bumped from full time to part time at work and lost his benefits. But it wasn't easy. The first time he pulled open the door and took in the crowd in the waiting room, he turned around and walked out.
``It was like, `Whoa ..... I can't do this,' '' he recalled Wednesday as he picked up food for the second time. But then he realized having the groceries could help him shift money to his utility bill and his car payment. ``Everyone else is doing it, and times are tough. Let's suck it up and see what happens.''
Out in the Manna parking lot, the Germantown woman--who was visiting the food bank for the second time and did not want her name used to spare her children embarrassment--was inspecting her food allotment with the zeal of a soccer mom at Whole Foods. She turned to Manna for help after her husband refinanced their home into a costly subprime mortgage and then moved out. She has been able to get the mortgage modified, but her finances remain precarious.
She checked the expiration date on a carton of soy milk, unscrewed the lid of a jar of organic peanut butter to make sure it was sealed and read the label on a tube of ground turkey. The turkey did not pass muster, and she politely returned it to a Manna staffer. ``I don't know what's in it,'' she explained.
``It's a double-edged sword,'' she said. ``You can't go without food, but certain foods at Manna, no way I'm going to feed my kids. It's kind of snotty.'' She rejoiced in a big bag of day-old bagels, sport drinks and doughnuts, treats she could no longer afford to buy her sons.
At times, this changing face of need has sparked moments of confusion and discomfort for those who are trying to help.
Christine Lucas, executive director of the Arlington Food Assistance Center, said she is often asked by volunteers and donors about the number of clients driving fancy cars. (A well-dressed couple who declined to be interviewed was there recently, putting their sacks into a Cadillac.) Lucas responds that it could be an employer's car or a family hanging onto its last asset.
Or it could be the formerly middle-class mom with Calvin Klein sunglasses perched atop her head who said she was going to have to search Epicurious.com for recipes that use black beans because the pantry had given her so many cans.
Appearances can be deceiving, as Debbie Lane and her two children discovered when they drove out to an affluent neighborhood in Chantilly to deliver $200 worth of school supplies to a needy family. Lane, of Fairfax, said her kids had offered to reuse some of their school supplies from last year so that they could contribute to the back-to-school drive, organized by the food pantry Our Daily Bread.
``My son, who is 8, said, `Mom, if this is the neighborhood we're dropping these things off in, I think we should turn our car around,' '' Lane recalled. ``It was a great segue for me to talk about what poverty does and does not look like.''
But even she was surprised at the size and scope of ``this palatial home with two brand-new expensive cars in the driveway. I was really grappling with this. I was thinking, `This is crazy.' '' She later learned that what she had tried to explain to her kids was true: The family that needed the supplies was renting rooms in the home's basement and had recently seen its income drop when the mother died of cancer.
The Germantown mother of four said she knew why she'd been mistaken for a volunteer by the donor dropping off food--it was her car.
``Because I have the [Sequoia], she thought I was doing the same thing she was, I guess,'' the woman speculated. She watched the donor drive away with a mix of envy and sadness, remembering what it was like ``to be normal.''
``What a glorious feeling ..... to be able to give to other people,'' she said. ``It is a better feeling to give than to receive. But sometimes you have to receive.''
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The gentleman from California is correct when he says that his side was guilty of air-dropping provisions into conference reports. I remember one time being up in the Rules Committee when a Department of Defense bill came before the committee. And after the conferees had finished all their work, all of a sudden this kind of mysterious language appeared providing immunity to drug companies that produced drugs that were not safe. And the reality was, Mr. Speaker, that they did that after the conference had finished up.
In this case here it's very, very different. In this case here, the child nutrition reauthorization, a bill we had hoped to have already done by now, is not completed. And if, in fact, this language was not put in here to extend expiring child nutrition authorization programs--and let me just kind of tell people what that is. It's things like school breakfasts and school lunches and after-school meals for kids who otherwise wouldn't get access to meals or nutrition.
So that language, which was agreed to by the authorizers, was put into this bill. Now, if we want to have an argument about process, fine. But the reality is here: if you did not do this right now, these programs would expire. And I don't know of anybody, maybe on your side they do, but I know for the majority on this side, people do not want those programs to expire because people depend on them.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, let me just clarify for the record, because I think maybe there is a difference here between what some of us are saying on this side of the aisle compared to what some of my friends are saying on the other side of the aisle.
I don't believe a hungry child can wait. I don't believe we can put that problem off till next year or 5 years or 10 years down the road. And in fact, I would argue that investing and making sure that that child gets the proper nutrition and the proper food early on in their lifetime will probably save us a whole bunch of money in terms of health care costs and lost learning opportunities and so many other things that come as a result of people being hungry and not getting enough to eat.
So we don't have time to wait. And one of the reasons we are trying to tackle health care, Mr. Speaker, is to try to get this deficit and this debt under control, something, by the way, that when Bill Clinton left office, he left historic surpluses. After a few years of my friends on the other side of the aisle, we have historic deficits, and now we're trying to dig ourselves out of this ditch.
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