Sam Farr: “Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for getting us back into regular order. I really praise the work of…”

“Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for getting us back into regular order. I really praise the work of this committee. I am proud to be on it. I am proud of the ranking member in bringing this to fruition. Madam Speaker, while we celebrate success--and this is one--we have to remember that we are still underfunding America. While we are praising America's need to grow, we are cutting, squeezing, and trimming government's ability to meet that population growth, particularly in my own State of California. We have got to get back to regular order of allowing the revenue. We have got to have some increases in revenue. Yeah, we have got to mind the store and we have to do cuts, squeezes, and trims, but what we are doing is we are leaving the poorest populations in this country at risk. I came out of the war on poverty. There is still a lot of poverty in America. Secretary Vilsack pointed out to the chair of the subcommittee that I am the ranking member on that there are 400 counties in the United States that are still by census the poorest counties in the United States--really, really poor. They are in the Third World, and they are in the United States. Our committee, our agriculture outreach in the food programs and in the economic development--water and rural electricity and all those things--are the solutions, and in the communications systems, the broadband, and so on. We've got to address this, and we don't have enough money to do that.…”