Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. HUDSON. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support our commonsense amendment to allow the States to conduct drug screening on applicants for welfare. If adopted, this amendment would join a list of good government reforms contained in the FARRM Bill that save taxpayer money and ensure integrity and accountability within our nutrition system.
From preventing lottery winners from receiving food stamps to closing loopholes and preventing illegal immigrants from receiving benefits, I commend the chairman and ranking member on the work done to reform the food stamps program in the FARRM Bill.
Mr. Chairman, our amendment simply allows the States to conduct drug testing to ensure addicts and criminals are not taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. This debate is not about hungry children. We all agree that we need to take care of the least among us, those who need this type of assistance. We all agree that we don't want children to go hungry. What this amendment is about is making sure that addicts and criminals are not taking what is not theirs, taking food from the mouths of these children, taking food from those who are in need.
So I ask my colleagues to just consider this as a simple measure, a commonsense measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. HUDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would yield myself the balance of my time.
Again, I ask my colleagues to consider this as a commonsense measure that does nothing to take food away from those who need it, but it makes sure the integrity of this program is upheld. We don't make any presumptions about folks on the program, but we think that States need this tool so that they can make sure that folks who are on the program are the folks that need to be on that program.
I thank the gen tle lady, my colleague, from Connecticut for endorsing this farm bill this year because we do eliminate direct payments. As she alluded, I agree, that is a practice that we should end, and so I appreciate her endorsement of that piece of it.
Mr. Chairman, with that, I will conclude by just saying I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense measure that does nothing but allow the States to have the tool to use drug testing should they see fit when administering this program.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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