Relating to Consideration of House Amendment to Senate Amendment to H.R. 2642, Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013; Providing for Consideration of H. Res. 378, Expressing Sense of House Relating to Tariff-Rate Quotas for Raw and Refined Sugar; and Providing for Consideration of H. Res. 379, Expressing Sense of House Relating to Crop Insurance
Floor Speech
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Ms. FOXX. House Resolution 380 provides for a motion to go to conference with the Senate on H.R. 2642, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act, also known as the farm bill.
Mr. Speaker, this rule authorizes House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas to make a motion to go to conference with the Senate on the farm bill and provides for consideration of two resolutions expressing the sense of the House regarding specific provisions in the farm bill.
Conference committees are a crucial step in resolving policy differences between the House and Senate, and I am encouraged that the House is taking this step to provide certainty for farmers across this country by reauthorizing Federal agriculture policy.
The House proposal is not perfect, but it moves Federal agriculture policy in the right direction; and my hope is that during a conference committee with the Senate, we can find common ground.
Additionally, the rule makes in order the consideration of two resolutions that express the sense of the House on crop insurance and the U.S. sugar program. The first resolution expresses the sense of the House that conferees should agree to limit crop insurance based on average adjusted gross income in excess of $750,000. This commonsense proposal ensures that crop insurance is appropriately targeted to those who need it most.
The second resolution instructs conferees to advance provisions to repeal the administration of tariff rate quotas and, thus, restore the Secretary of Agriculture's authority to manage supplies of sugar throughout the year to meet domestic demand at reasonable prices. I strongly support this resolution, as it restores free-market principles to the U.S. sugar program.
This rule provides for the business of legislating and resolving differences between our two Chambers to find common ground and move forward in reauthorizing Federal agriculture policy. I urge my colleagues to support this rule, the motion to go to conference, and the motions to instruct provided by this rule.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2642 makes commonsense, market-oriented reforms to agricultural policy, which is why it is time to begin conversations with our Senate colleagues on a path forward that ultimately gets these important reforms enacted into law.
This bill isn't perfect, but it puts us on a path to provide certainty to America's farmers and ranchers by adopting a 5-year farm bill that will actually become law.
This measure is the result of more than 3 years of debate and discussion, including 46 hearings and a 2-year audit of every farm program. The bill repeals or consolidates more than 100 programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, including direct payments.
It eliminates and streamlines duplicative and overlapping conservation programs and trims traditional farm policy by almost $23 billion. The bill eliminates direct payments and ensures no payments are made to those who do not actually farm.
The bill also provides regulatory relief for farmers and ranchers. It eliminates a duplicative permitting requirement for pesticides and prohibits the EPA from implementing the unjustified and unscientific biological opinions of the National Marine Fisheries Service until there is an unbiased, scientific peer review of those opinions.
The bill requires regulatory agencies across the government to use scientifically sound information in moving forward with their regulatory initiatives. It requires the Secretary of Agriculture to advocate on behalf of the farmers and ranchers as other agencies move forward with regulations affecting food and fiber.
The bill also eliminates duplicative reporting requirements for seed importers.
Finally, H.R. 2642 repeals the underlying 1949 permanent law and replaces it with the 2013 farm bill. This is important, Mr. Speaker, because without reauthorization farm policy will revert to permanent statutes established in the 1938 and 1949 laws which are drastically different from current programs.
The permanent statutes exclude many commodities such as rice, soybeans, and peanuts; set support prices much higher than current levels; and prevent new enrollment in various conservation programs.
Permanent agriculture law established by the Agriculture Adjustments Act of 1938 and the Agriculture Act of 1949 does not reflect current farming and marketing practices, trade agreements or market circumstances.
Farmers, as well as taxpayers, will benefit from a modernized bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I respect my colleague from Massachusetts, and it is obvious that every time we have anything on this floor or in the Rules Committee where we are dealing with the subject of hunger that he is extraordinarily passionate about the issue.
Mr. Speaker, Republicans care about Americans who are hungry. We care about hunger issues. He makes it sound as though we are heartless people. We are not.
What we are doing here is our best to preserve the program for the truly needy and those who are hungry in this country.
My colleague says it is the most efficiently and effectively-run program in the country, with low error rates. That is not what the research shows. It isn't even what TV programs find out on their own with very little research.
They go out and they find the terrible abuse with the program, the SNAP program, which used to be called the food stamp program, but it was given this Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program name some time ago to get away from the term ``food stamps.'' But that is what it is. It is a food stamp program.
Almost everybody in this country knows of people who have abused the program. Now, we don't want to deny help to truly needy people. If we can make these reforms in this program, Mr. Speaker, we have a chance to preserve the entire program for those who truly need it.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3102, the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act of 2013, as I said, is designed to preserve the integrity of the SNAP program, or food stamps for families, and especially for children who rely on food stamps. Its cost-saving reforms are a step in the right direction and are long overdue out of respect for needy Americans and taxpayers.
This bill makes the first reforms to the program since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, and these reforms were strengthened during a rigorous amendment process on the House floor.
Despite media reports to the contrary, House Republicans are not cutting SNAP for individuals who currently meet the program's eligibility requirements. Instead, our reforms focus on eliminating fraud and abuse that exist within the program and remove from the programs individuals who do not qualify for the benefits.
Mr. Speaker, I think that bears repeating. What we are doing is eliminating fraud and abuse and removing from the program individuals who do not qualify for benefits. That is what the American people expect us to do in our oversight processes here.
Because of several well-documented and legally questionable efforts by President Obama's Department of Agriculture and by the individual States that administer the program, SNAP benefits have been extended to a number of recipients who would not otherwise qualify. The growth in SNAP spending caused by such expansion efforts will strain the safety net until it breaks, necessitating much higher taxes and indiscriminate cuts that would hit the poorest Americans the hardest. From a moral perspective, such an outcome would harm the very people programs like SNAP are intended to help, and that is unacceptable. That is why I voted for H.R. 3102 when it passed the House on September 19.
The bill ensures benefits are reserved for legal recipients and aren't directed to illegal immigrants.
The bill closes the ``heat-and-eat'' loophole related to electricity bill assistance, gives States the authority to require drug testing for recipients, and prohibits felons from receiving SNAP benefits.
H.R. 3102 reinstates work requirements for all able-bodied adults, without dependents, receiving SNAP benefits.
An overextended, unchecked SNAP program won't be capable of serving the citizens it is purposed to help. It is the job of this Congress to ensure the program is held accountable as a steward of taxpayer dollars and to provide a safety net for the needy.
For the first time, the House separated farm policy from the food stamp program, which is only appropriate, as 80 percent of the so-called ``farm bill'' in the past was spent on providing nutrition assistance to needy families. The farm-only portion of the farm bill authorizes farm programs through fiscal year 2018; however, H.R. 3102 authorizes appropriations for SNAP only through fiscal year 2016.
If enacted and if the two bills were addressed on 5-and 3-year intervals, respectively, this would decouple SNAP from the authorization of farm programs until 2031. Considering agriculture and nutrition programs independently, going forward, will help take politics out of the equation and allow for reforms that will sustain both categories of programs in years to come.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the rule and this legislation underlying it is not designed to abuse or demonize poor people. What we are trying to do is to save these programs for the truly needy.
Mr. Speaker, we are not simply doing oversight on the farm bill and on agriculture issues. The House has been doing its job of oversight throughout the Federal Government. We have been doing that throughout this entire session. We are looking to find fraud, abuse, and waste in every program. It just happens that today we are talking about this program.
But as you know, Mr. Speaker, almost every day we bring forth legislation that will help us identify waste, fraud, and abuse and do everything we can to protect hardworking taxpayers in this country who are providing the funds to take care of the truly needy in this country and to allow us to help those people, and that is what this legislation does.
Mr. Speaker, the work of making these improvements and reforms to longstanding Federal policy is not easy. I commend Chairman Lucas and the members of the Agriculture Committee for their thoughtful work. I was pleased to work with them and to have three commonsense amendments included in H.R. 2642 when it passed the House.
The spending safeguard amendment will cap spending on the Farm Risk Management Election program at 110 percent of CBO-predicted levels for the first 5 years in which payments are disbursed.
And, Mr. Speaker, let me point out to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that this amendment passed with bipartisan support, as did most of the amendments to that legislation.
In the event government's cost projections prove completely wrong, the amendment will ensure taxpayers are not forced to automatically pay the difference between Washington's mistake and reality.
My second amendment, the Sunset Discretionary Programs amendment, will automatically end discretionary programs in the 2013 farm bill upon expiration of the bill's 5-year authorization period. Many programs authorized by the farm bill are authorized indefinitely. This amendment will require Congress to justify a program's continued existence and funding through regular reauthorization efforts.
As our national debt approaches $17 trillion, Mr. Speaker, Congress simply cannot afford to add to the number of costly Federal programs that are on autopilot. This was really an excellent amendment, Mr. Speaker.
Finally, Congressman Keith Ellison, my Democrat colleague, and I offered the crop insurance transparency amendment, which will require the government to disclose the names of key persons or entities receiving Federal crop insurance subsidies. Specifically, disclosure would be required for Members of Congress and their immediate families, Cabinet Secretaries and their immediate families, and entities in which any of the preceding parties are majority stockholders. This information is already recorded, but members of the public have to petition the government under the Freedom of Information Act to acquire the data.
It shouldn't take a 4-year request for the American people to figure out whether their leaders are receiving government farm subsidies. This bipartisan amendment makes this information available to the public without a FOIA request.
Mr. Speaker, we want transparency, and my amendment takes us much closer to that. I appreciate Chairman Lucas' willingness to work with me on these amendments, and I look forward to seeing them maintained during the conference committee.
With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I would challenge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in terms of whether we recognize poor people or not. Some of us probably grew up poorer than anybody on the other side of the aisle. I am one of those people. I have great empathy for people who are poor, but I am so pleased that we live in the greatest country in the world in which we have the opportunities to overcome poverty because of the great opportunities that are given to us in the country.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, Republicans want to see the government reopen also. We have sent many pieces of legislation over to the Senate, but the Senate has refused to act on them. We hope very much to get the government open again.
We are not opposed to helping the truly needy in this country. We want to help those people. We believe by reforming the legislation related to food stamps that we will be able to save the program for the truly needy.
Mr. Speaker, negotiations are an absolute necessity in a divided government, and conference committees provide an avenue for the House and Senate to meet and resolve policy differences.
Therefore, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this rule, to provide a motion to go to conference on the farm bill so we can move the reauthorization process forward.
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