Sam Farr

The only way to protect these industries and ocean-users and their contributions to the national economy is to reduce the amount of marine debris in the environment.

I have always thought that this Committee has one of the most interesting jurisdictions in the world because, with the exclusive economic zones throughout all of the territories and atolls and everything that the United States owns, the…

Thank you Chairman Fleming and Ranking Member Sablan for holding a hearing on the Marine Debris Act Reauthorization Amendments of 2011 (H.R. 1171), which I introduced in March.

I bring to you today a bill that is reauthorizing what is already in the law, a bill that was created by the Chairman in the Senate, Inouye, who obviously knows the issues from representing Hawaii, and the late Senator Ted Stevens, who was…

Thank you for your leadership in addressing marine debris.

Those are very expensive; they are thousands and thousands of dollars.

What we do is we monitor it now. We monitor it by--we can tag it with satellite tags if it is big enough.

Marine debris is not just an eyesore. It has enormous economic impacts.

According to the National Academy of the Sciences, we dump more than 14 billion pounds of trash into the ocean every year.

Thank you very much for yielding. And we didn't give it enough money to do that. And then in the last thing, we dropped some crazy part into this program, which I think has gotten a lot of negative attention this week and deserves it, and…

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to thank my co-chair, the chair of the committee who we just heard from, Mr. Kingston. We get along very well, and it's wonderful to work with him. But I'd also like to thank the chair of the…

I am strongly opposed to the National Right to Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011. This misguided bill is unworkable in practice and will compromise officer safety and public security. Furthermore, this bill flagrantly treads on the rights of…

If we're going to encourage progress--we're investing a lot of money in Colombia, we have Peace Corps volunteers in Colombia--if we're going to encourage growth of U.S. industries and markets in South America, and if we're going to really…

I thank the chairman for yielding. I rise in support of this agreement. Look, Colombia is a very important country to us. It has a lot of problems, but it has incredible potential. Colombia is a big country. It's the 20th-largest trade…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding. I look forward to this debate. As was said, I lived in Colombia, and I have a different perspective than a lot of people. First of all, I think we have to put in perspective that the Latin American…

I thank the gentleman for yielding. Last night, I was in a town hall meeting in California, and it was very clear. It was a bipartisan whole group of people, and what they told us very truly is, Stop playing games. They know that the…

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know we've been here almost 25 hours of debate. I appreciate the open rule and the fact that we've had a huge debate. I personally would like to thank you and all the staff. I wore my Father's Day tie…

Reclaiming my time, with all due respect, I don't think the Agriculture Committee created the Brazilian problem. It was not the committee's act that created it. It was what the Brazilians did in their ability to become a major agricultural…

I rise with great concerns about this amendment, because I don't think it does what the author intends it to do. All it does is say none of the funds made available in this act--this act, not other acts, not other bills that the chair and…

I move to strike the last word. The CHAIR. The gentleman from California is recognized for 5 minutes.

This is the kind of program that I think Mr. Flake pointed out that you wonder why we use taxpayer moneys to market American agriculture abroad, and you say, well, we don't need to do that. As he pointed out, he pointed out a couple of…

Look, if you like dirty air, you will love this amendment. If you like dirty fuel, you will love this amendment. What this provision does is it strikes the requirement in law that says to the government, which is a big purchaser of fuel…

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…

What Ranking Member Peterson is talking about is that this is an ag bill that is to help agriculture, producers of agriculture. What this amendment does is hurt them. It supports the banks by delaying transparency. So it's going to cost…

Could you tell me where in the bill this has anything to do with what you're talking about?