Sam Farr: “I rise as a very proud member of the Subcommittee on Agriculture of the Committee on Appropriations, and I have to say…”

“I rise as a very proud member of the Subcommittee on Agriculture of the Committee on Appropriations, and I have to say that it is an incredible joy to serve under the chairmanship of the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), the ranking member. I think the camaraderie on this committee is one of the most outstanding in all of the House. The underlying bill that we are debating today is about appropriating money for the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture. The difficulty with this bill is the allocation that was given to the committee is far less than it was last year, so we have to squeeze a lot of funds; and in the end, we squeeze a lot of programs that probably should not be squeezed. We squeeze funding shortfalls for food safety. This bill underfunds the budget request for USDA by about $14 million. They inspect meat and poultry. I am not sure that people want us to have shortfalls and an inability to inspect meat and poultry. It shortfalls the resources to deal with market concentration and abusive practices.”