Nick Smith

What I am a little nervous about on this reorganization plan that government might have is what some might call monetizing the debt, just printing more money, causing inflation, so it is easier to pay back. That would be terrible.

If the gentleman were to put his pointer on the green line, even the bragging of paying down part of that public debt lasted such a short time because of the increase in total spending by this Congress and the Presidents.

Let us talk about monetizing the debt because some economists have said all we need to do is monetize the debt. That means printing more money and having inflation making it easier for the government to pay down that debt.

A wise man once said that ``if you are in debt, you are not free.'' So whether one is an individual or a business or the Federal Government, we have got to pay attention to debt and eventually have some kind of a plan to pay that debt off.

That is correct, $331 billion is the national debt; and now we have upped the military spending to about $360 billion.

This bill that I introduced makes it very clear that the fire grant program is separate and distinct and the U.S. Fire Administration is still going to continue to administer that program separate from what might be broken off from FEMA.

The Goss amendment means that we continue what has not worked for the last 41 years. One of the certifications that the President has to make is that Cuba is not providing technology that could be used to produce, develop, or deliver…

If a family loses income, a family loses their job and they go on unemployment, the budget they started when they had a full job is not going to continue spending as usual. Maybe we should even reduce it below the budget.

I just want to suggest that some of us agree with the President in where it is appropriate to have the Sea Grant Program administered. I just would like to reinforce for our future consideration the possibility and the logic of having this…

I am informed that the language of the gentlewoman's amendment limits the amount that can be spent on this effort, and who is to say it should be more, and I just suggest rather than let politicians deciding, let us let the scientific…

The gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) might also be relating to this, but in the bioterrorism bill that we passed a couple of weeks ago, we did include over $190 million to USDA, additional funding to the Department of Energy…

Reclaiming my time, to make it clear, it is somewhat of a different amendment than the gentlewoman submitted in the Committee on Science, but even more and above that, it seems to me like we should agree that if we can leave NSF and the…

The tremendous potential of plant genomics is limited only by the creativity of the scientists and this body and Washington allowing them to do the research. This bill will help create the next generation of plants that will provide…

The language in the bill was not for-profit companies, it is for nonprofit organizations to be involved, so the nonprofits that are interested in something beside profit.

Really, that is essentially through taxes, but an increase in the cost of their food. If you add to that maybe some production that the market is paying more than it otherwise would, than there is even additional costs.

The statistic I think, at least for last year, is 40 percent of the net income of farmers came in government checks. If farmers do not like it, our goal has to be to increase production.

The Lifesaver plant over in Holland, Michigan, producing pretty much all of the Lifesavers produced in the world, has now made the decision, because of the price of sugar, that they are going to go to Canada.

That might hit our family farmers that are producing sugar even more aggressively than the tariff rate quotas that we tried to develop to protect them.

I thank the Speaker. So here again is a real problem of asking us to vote on something that we are not even going to be able to read. If they give it to us at the last minute tomorrow morning, it is my guess that we are looking at a bill…

The fact is if we had real limits that would include what is called the generic certificate, which is the end run, the huge megacorporation type farms used to have the million dollar payments, then there is no question that we would have a…

I have been a farmer all my life, a director of the Michigan Farm Bureau. I understand farm programs. To respond to your question why are farmers going broke, it is because Federal agricultural programs encourage more production, and that…

If we can convey one message, it is that Social Security has real problems. I think the temptation in a political election year is for anyone that comes up with suggestions on how to solve Social Security, how to keep it solvent, to…

I just wanted to bring something to the attention of the chairman and the body that an engineer and pilot in my district suggested that we have a separate entrance for pilots and a solid bulkhead, doing away or reducing the need for…

One idea to increase airplane safety would be to create separate entrances for pilots on aircraft and eliminate access between the cabin and the cockpit. This would make it impossible to take over an aircraft from the cabin, reducing the…

I think one area that we might want to reconsider looking at once this gets to conference or maybe even amendments today is an issue that relates to terrorism, and that is, our potential worst problem that we have in this country is the…