Motion To Instruct Conferees On H.R. 2996, Department Of The Interior, Environment, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, before I get into the substance of this motion to instruct, I want to thank Chairman Dicks and his staff for listening to the views of the minority during our preconference deliberations. While we may not agree on everything in this Interior Appropriations conference agreement, our staff discussions have been very productive.

The motion I am offering today is very straightforward and does two things. First, it would insist on section 425 of the House bill regarding a prohibition on funds to implement any rule requiring mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from manure management systems. Secondly, it would require that the Interior Appropriations conference report be available 72 hours prior to House consideration for the public and Members to read.

This motion to instruct simply insists upon the House-passed bill's position relating to the Latham amendment. The Latham amendment simply says that the EPA cannot implement a rule that requires mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from cow, pig, or chicken manure.

The Latham amendment was offered in full committee and was one of the very few amendments passed this year with strong bipartisan support. Every Democrat on the Appropriations Committee with agricultural interests in his district supported it, and no one made an effort to strike the language on the House floor. Now, of course anyone could have done that--excuse me, I was wrong. We didn't consider this bill under an open rule, so they would have had to go to the Rules Committee, but no one did go to the Rules Committee to get an amendment approved so that they could offer it on the floor. It was part of the House-passed Interior Appropriations bill and should be a part of the Interior Appropriations conference agreement.

According to the EPA, livestock manure management systems account for less than 1 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Over 85 percent--that's 85 percent--of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in total come from sources other than manure management systems, and these sources are not subject to the reporting rule. By the EPA's own admission, regulating these sources would be overly expensive and burdensome.

Members of the Agriculture Committee have been warning us for years of the danger of climate change rulemaking outside of the legislative process. This EPA rule is clear evidence that the chickens have finally come home to roost, as have the cows and pigs.

If you have livestock or a family farm in your congressional district, you will want to support this motion to instruct. The simple truth is that the livestock industry is being hammered by the downturn in our national economy. If you are raising animals for food, you are either losing your shirt or you are going out of business. That's the truth. It's not an exaggeration. Frozen credit markets have left farmers and ranchers without the credit they need to run their day-to-day operations, and many have been forced to sell their land or declare bankruptcy.

It was only a few weeks ago that we added $350 million to the Ag Appropriations conference report to bail out the dairy industry, which is collapsing under the strain of the credit crisis and low milk prices. And in the Interior conference report, we're not only making it more difficult for farmers to succeed, we are setting them up to fail.

There is another irony here worth noting. The Interior Appropriations conference agreement is likely to include an exemption to a clean air rule affecting ships on the Great Lakes. Chairman Obey recognized that the excesses of the EPA would place additional hardships upon an economy already devastated by the recession, so the chairman has done what anyone in his position would do to help his constituents--he took action. I happen to agree with him. That's no different from what Tom Latham is trying to do to help farmers, ranchers, and livestock producers in Iowa and across the country. The only difference is that Mr. Latham's amendment was in the original House bill and Chairman Obey's rider was airdropped in at the last minute. So we are going to protect the Great Lakes on the one hand while we regulate farmers out of business on the other hand.

If the EPA had existed in Biblical times, there is no question in my mind that it would have regulated gas emissions from Noah's Ark. Poor Noah and his livestock; they could withstand a 40-day flood, but they would never have survived the EPA.

I encourage Members on both sides to take a step back and think about this. Let's use a little common sense here. I urge Members, especially if you support agriculture, farming, and the livestock industry, to support this motion.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington for entertaining this motion to instruct.

I said earlier that we had authorizing committees to do this. Some have suggested maybe they don't do their job and the Appropriations Committee has to do it for them. I don't think that's right.

But I will tell you that in the only comprehensive climate change bill that's passed the House, the Waxman-Markey bill, it exempted all animal agriculture sources from greenhouse gas emissions reporting. We have two bills now that have passed the House, and the House has stated they do not want to have to report animal emissions to the EPA, Waxman-Markey and the Interior appropriations bill that passed.

Now remember this legislation, or this amendment by Mr. Latham, was not in the original Interior bill as it came before the Appropriations Committee. It was added as an amendment. We affirmatively said we do not want the EPA to implement this rule on greenhouse gas emissions from animals. We affirmatively said it. It was not an oversight. That's what the committee said. When it came to the full House, no one offered an amendment to remove that language. I think that we ought to insist on the House language that is in this bill.

Now I am puzzled a little bit when the chairman says ``we'll do our best'' and then stands up and defends the rule. What is ``our best''? I don't know where we are headed with this.

Let me tell you how this process works just a little bit. Preconferencing goes on between the House and the Senate, generally between the staffs; they talk with the Members of Congress and so forth, but the preconferencing goes on. Apparently the Senate didn't like the Latham amendment, and we caved. And we said, No, we'll drop the Latham amendment.

I think we need to insist on the Latham amendment. It's been the only expression by either body of the direction we ought to go, that we are opposed to this mandatory reporting by the EPA that's going to cost us, I think the gentleman from Iowa said, $115 million a year. Remember, we just gave the dairy industry $350 million because of the hardships they are currently suffering. And now we are going to impose these kinds of costs on them.

We need to go to conference, and when we say we're going to do the best we can, if, when we go to conference, if the preconferenced conference report does not have the Latham language in it, that means we can offer an amendment to put it in the language, in the appropriation bill. But if the Senate doesn't have the votes to pass it there, then it's dropped and it's out.

If it goes to conference with the language in, they have to get an amendment both past the House and the Senate to drop it. It's to our advantage and to the will of this House that it have the language in the preconferenced report before we go to conference, and apparently we've dropped it. So when the chairman says we'll do the best we can, I don't know exactly what that means.

Mr. DICKS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SIMPSON. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DICKS. It means we got 99.9 percent of Latham. That's pretty good.

Mr. SIMPSON. Now I'm really confused. I'm really puzzled. I don't understand what the gentleman is saying.

Mr. DICKS. We all agree that for these small farmers, this makes no sense. The only people that are going to be under this rule are the people who are emitting the equivalent of 58,000 barrels of oil in these emissions. These are the biggest farmers in the country.

They can afford to do this.

This is a compromise. The spirit of Latham has been adopted, but we regulate the small number of people, around 90 in the country, who have these very large emissions. I think it makes sense. I think it's a decent compromise.

Mr. SIMPSON. Reclaiming my time, I would yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. LATHAM. I thank the gentleman.

I don't know how you can say you have 99 percent when the amendment is eliminated. The fact of the matter is that we are going to be spending millions of dollars whether you are large producers or small producers to figure out who qualifies under this.

That's one of the major problems here is that nobody knows for sure who it is and who it isn't. You are going to have to spend as a large producer, small producer, whatever, a whole bunch of money to figure out whether or not you actually qualify.

The fact of the matter is, any of these costs are going to be passed down to the consumers. Now, I know, maybe another 30, 40 bucks a week out of a grocery bill isn't much for folks around here. But I tell you what, there are folks hurting at home, and that's a lot of money.

The idea that somehow this isn't going to affect the price of food, that it isn't going to affect the cost of agriculture; and to do nothing, just have no improvement as far as the environment, no improvement as far as waste management, as far as air emissions, it will do nothing except add cost to the end consumer. I'm sorry, but my producers out there know what this is going to cost them, each and every one of them, because they're going to have to go through a whole process to figure out what they can do and cannot do; it's going to add cost, and we're going to end up with the families today paying the bill at the grocery store because of onerous regulations exactly like this.

Mr. SIMPSON. Reclaiming my time, I will point out once again, this is the Appropriations Committee. The authorizing committee specifically exempts all animal agricultural source from greenhouse gas emission reporting. We got 100 percent of the legislation under the requirement the EPA can't oversee the emissions from the ships on the Great Lakes. We need to stand up strong, and we need to stand up for what the House voted for, not once but twice, what the committee voted for. We need to stand up in the conference committee with the Senate.

I encourage the chairman to do just that. I encourage my colleagues to vote for this motion to instruct.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DICKS. I yield back the balance of my time.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to instruct.

There was no objection.

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