Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Chairman, I want to rise in opposition to a previous amendment, to the Gosar amendment, which would eliminate the Food for Peace program and transfer it to rural development.

I also was going to rise in opposition to the gentleman from Georgia's amendment, which also goes after Food for Peace. I am glad he is withdrawing it, but I find it astonishing that there are so many on the other side who are attacking programs that I think are so vital to our national security.

Mr. Gosar's amendment would tell farmers that we will take away from them $1 billion in U.S. purchases of their crops so that we can borrow money in the form of loans for other purposes. That's essentially what he is proposing. Does that make sense to anyone?

So we tell U.S. farmers who have been selling wheat, rice, soybeans, vegetable oil, beans, peas, lentils, and other commodities to the U.S. Government that this market is closed to them. So long. Goodbye. Go borrow money. Go into debt. Take out a loan to develop the rural economy.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I support the Rural Development program, and I obviously support the Food for Peace program. Both of them directly benefit American farmers. Mr. Gosar himself said Food for Peace title II (P.L. 480) merits support.

Well, let's talk about why. It supports U.S. farmers, millers, freight rail, truck, and shipping. Food aid provided by USAID is a lifesaving measure for 11 million to 16 million vulnerable people overseas. Our largest emergency food aid programs include Darfur and southern Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, and Ethiopia. U.S. food aid not only helps people survive; it supports U.S. national security interests. It promotes stability and goodwill, especially in Libya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Our emergency and humanitarian food aid sends the clear message to desperate people in need that the American people care. The Gosar amendment sends the opposite message--that the American people don't care at all; go ahead and starve.

We need to support Food for Peace, and we need to oppose that amendment. But we also need to oppose amendments that gut essential food and nutrition programs for poor people not only here in the United States but around the world. This notion that somehow when we support programs like Food for Peace, that it's just helping a bunch of foreigners overseas, is just wrongheaded. It is American farmers that produce much of the food that goes to support the hungry around the world. It is American farmers that are so important in our battle against terrorism because, quite frankly, I think these programs, as Secretary Gates has said, do more to enhance our national security than anything else.

I urge my colleagues who are coming to the floor with amendments to gut these programs, to stop it. Enough. These are essential programs. They help people who are helpless overseas but also help support our economy here in the United States and help our U.S. farmers.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in very, very, very strong opposition to this amendment gutting the Food for Peace program. Food for peace.

I find it somewhat ironic that we have people who oppose food for peace but support weapons for war without giving it a second thought. The fact of the matter is that this amendment would do great harm to some of the most helpless people in the world. I believe very, very strongly on a bipartisan basis that this amendment should be defeated.

The Food for Peace program has saved the lives of millions and millions of people. It is a good program. It is something we should be proud of in this country, and on a bipartisan basis, I believe, we are proud of the Food for Peace program. I think we need a big bipartisan vote to defeat this amendment.

I appreciated the chairman's remarks earlier, and I thank him for his comments on this issue.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I thank the gentleman. I would just say that, yes, we need to get serious about the deficit and we need to find ways to bring this deficit down. But taking food out of the mouths of children is not the way to do this.

I can go through a litany of things that deserve to be cut, from some of the subsidies that we provide some of the big agricultural businesses to the subsidization of the oil companies to some of the tax breaks for the Donald Trumps of the world. I would rather start there. But to take, to denigrate this program, I think, is wrong. This is something we should be proud of, and, in a bipartisan way, we should be proud of this. Presidents, both Republican and Democratic, have supported this program, and this is vital to the survival of so many people around the world.

Again, I would reiterate what Secretary Gates said. These programs, these developmental programs, are important to our national security. I'm going to tell you, they do more to help improve our image and protect our security around the world than a lot of these other programs that we have that export military hardware all around the world. This is important. This is real. This saves lives.

I would urge my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to soundly reject this amendment and let us support food for peace. Let us support food programs for the poor. That's who we are. That reflects well on this country. I urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Chairman, this is simply a bad amendment. It eliminates funding for one of the U.S. signature programs to reduce child hunger in the world. I helped establish the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food For Education Program, first as a pilot project in 2000, and then as a permanent program in the 2002 farm bill. It has always had strong bipartisan support, including from my colleague and my friend Jo Ann Emerson and then-Congressmen, now-Senators John Thune and Jerry Moran.

McGovern-Dole has one basic goal: provide at least one nutritious meal to some of the world's most vulnerable children in a school setting. It has reduced the incidence of hunger among school-age children. It has increased school enrollment and attendance. It has increased the support of families and communities for education, especially for girls.

McGovern-Dole is a proven success. Instead of cutting its funding, let alone eliminating it, we should be scaling it up. The cuts to McGovern-Dole already in the bill would end school meals for more than 400,000 children. Eliminating the funding would literally take the food out of the mouths of over 5 million of the world's most vulnerable children.

Mr. Chairman, it's bad enough to ignore hungry children. It's even worse to give a hungry child a meal, to give their parents hope for a better future, and then take it away. These are not just numbers in a bill. These are real living, breathing human beings, real children who are in school, many for the very first time because the U.S. is working with local communities to advance education and nutrition.

Now, I've visited some of these programs around the world. I respectfully suggest to those who want to eliminate them to first go and see with their own eyes what they are doing on the ground, look these children, their parents, their teachers, their community leaders in the eye, and make sure you want to tell them you don't care if they go hungry or get a chance to go to school.

In Colombia, I visited a program in Soacha, on the outskirts of Bogota. On barren hillsides, surrounded by shanties housing thousands of internally displaced families, children were receiving a school breakfast and lunch. Mothers and grandmothers were training as cooks, preparing the meals. Clearly visible in the cafeteria were USAID bags of grains, beans, and lentils.

One mother came up to me and said, Please thank the American people when you go back home. I couldn't feed my children. I couldn't send them to school. I was afraid my son--who was 11 years old--was going to join the paramilitaries or the guerrillas just to get food. Now my son is getting fed, and he's staying in school. Please tell the American people thank you.

In Nairobi, Kenya, in the largest slum in the world, I went to a McGovern-Dole breakfast and lunch program. I was amazed by the students' energy and achievements. The school principal showed me how they store and prepare the U.S. commodities that feed her students and how all the students know that this is a program from the people of the United States of America.

I ate a cereal mush made from yellow peas, grown by American farmers, in a room full of children. The kids dug into this food like it was manna from heaven. One little boy would take a bite and then scoop a small amount out of his bowl and put it into his pockets. He was taking food home to his younger siblings who don't get anything to eat at all.

Outside of Nairobi is Masai country and a school for girls where McGovern-Dole provides a hot lunch. I helped cook and serve the meal of U.S. bulgur wheat and locally grown vegetables. One student told me how grateful she was to go to school and eat every day.

She grew up in a village over a hundred miles away. When she was 12, her father told her that she had to marry a much older man. She refused. Her father ordered her to go to her uncle's house, get his machete, and bring it back to him. She knew that her father was going to kill her. She ran away, walking alone for days, because she had heard of this school. She was then 15, healthy, well-fed, and at the top of her class. I knew I was talking to someone who could be president someday. In the very best way, this young woman will never forget us.

And in the very worst way, when we take food away from children, families, and schools, those communities will never forget us either. They won't forget that we took away their children's future. I wouldn't forget it if it were my child. Would you?

Mr. Chairman, there are many ways to advance U.S. national security and economic interests abroad. Education and child nutrition are very much at the top of that list. It is important that we support the McGovern-Dole program. This has enjoyed incredible bipartisan support, and I'm going to tell you this does more to enhance our national security than sending weapons to countries all over the world.

The people who benefit from this program know it comes from the people of the United States of America. This is a good program. Support the McGovern-Dole program. Reject this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I just want to thank the gentlewoman for her comments and to thank her for her leadership not only on this issue but on some of the other issues to help hungry children around the world.

I just want to also commend her for making the point that in the McGovern-Dole program, there are provisions that require that countries graduate out of the program. So this is not a permanent U.S. handout, if you will. This is some support to help get established school feeding programs that will, one, get more kids in school; and two, give kids a nutritious meal.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me clarify what insisting on this point of order means.

It means that the amendment that Ms. DeLauro offered in committee, which was approved in the Appropriations Committee, is nullified, which means that Brazilian cotton farmers get subsidies and poor pregnant women and children do not get the money for WIC.

I have nothing against Brazilian cotton farmers, but Brazil's economy is doing pretty good right now.

The Rules Committee could have protected the money for WIC. The Rules Committee waived points of order against a whole bunch of stuff in this bill except for three provisions. So it wouldn't have been unusual or extraordinary for the Rules Committee to protect this provision. Many of us pleaded with the committee to do just that, to respect the work of the Appropriations Committee when it came to protecting WIC, when it came to protecting poor pregnant women and children.

Madam Chair, my friends on the other side of the aisle say all the time that they're with us in trying to cut excessive subsidies and putting the focus back on the people here in the United States who need help. This would have been an opportunity. If not now, when are we going to do this?

So, Madam Chair, I would hope that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would reconsider and not insist on their point of order. I think poor pregnant women and children in this country who benefit from WIC are more important right now than subsidizing Brazilian cotton farmers.

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