Sam Farr: “I rise with great concern for this amendment. It wants to reduce about 5.8 percent across the board. Our problem is that…”

“I rise with great concern for this amendment. It wants to reduce about 5.8 percent across the board. Our problem is that we have dealt a really bad deal. The bill that we brought to the floor--and we cut some last night across the board--is $5 billion, or 23 percent below what the President requested. The President put together all of the asks, and as you know, OMB scrubs those things. And we're always very critical of the President's requests, sometimes because they're so low. Nonetheless, this is 23 percent below what the President requested. It's 14 percent below what we enacted last year. We in the committee last year, under Rosa DeLauro, when we were in the majority, we didn't have the impact on farm programs, particularly the environmental programs, that the cuts do this year. It's below the 2010-enacted level, and it's actually below the 2008-enacted level. You know, people use these terms very loosely, ``below a level.'' But think of it in your own personal income. Think about what the costs of life were for you in 2008 versus now. And I would submit that almost in every case, your water bill, your cable bill, your garbage bill, your utility bill, certainly the price of gasoline now, is a lot higher than it was in 2008. Nonetheless, you've got the same amount of money. So it's going to have a draconian impact, this amendment and the underlying bill, on the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. So I'm concerned.…”