Cord Byrd: “Mr. President, the Agriculture appropriations bill is fundamental to the Nation's agricultural economy and supports…”

“Mr. President, the Agriculture appropriations bill is fundamental to the Nation's agricultural economy and supports foreign and domestic food programs. Unfortunately, porkbarrel interests also received remarkable support in this final conference report. While this final conference report includes less porkbarrel spending than the Senate bill passed just a couple weeks ago, it still includes $335 million in wasteful, unnecessary, and unreviewed spending which is $30 million more than the amount included in the final report passed last year. Every single appropriations bill we have passed so far has an increase in porkbarrel spending over last year. We are now up to $9.6 billion of wasted, unnecessary programs. While the Senator from Wisconsin is on the floor, I saw one of the more egregious things happen the other night when there was a managers' package which had 35 provisions in it. When we were about to vote on it, I asked: Does anybody here know what is in this package? No one did. We found out what was in it. What was in it was a violation of a trade agreement we just concluded with Vietnam.”