Maxine Waters: “the second amendment is a $500,000 request from the Commodity Credit Corporation to procure additional contractors for…”

“the second amendment is a $500,000 request from the Commodity Credit Corporation to procure additional contractors for the Judge Adjudication Mediation Service for the resolution of outstanding claims under the Pigford v. Glickman consent decree. I might add that there should be a correction in the way ``Pigford'' has been spelled in the amendment that we submitted. Let me just say that this amendment is consistent with what we are trying to do to facilitate these claims. Again, you have these farmers who filed these claims in good faith, and we have supported them in good faith from both sides of the aisle with the class action lawsuit. The judge put together this process by which to get it done. We have the appropriate amount of dollars by which to get it done. We have the process that has been signed off on. We have so-called monitors. We have the facilitators and the adjudicators, but it is not getting done. This would satisfy some the complaints that I am hearing, that there are not enough people involved in this contractor relationship that we have to get the job done. So this $500,000 from the Commodity Credit Corporation would simply procure additional contractors, speed it up, get it done. The money is there in the system by which to do it. This would just supply $500,000 to get additional contractors to make sure it gets done.”