Political Quotes

“this is an interesting part of the President's budget. When we reviewed it, we noticed, first of all, that over $400 million in new user fees were proposed by the President to be assessed on the food and poultry processing plants all around the country to generate money to pay for the inspections that are performed in those plants by Federal employees. This was a proposal for a change in the law and the legislation. Our committee, of course, doesn't have jurisdiction to change the law. We simply appropriate the money, consistent with existing law. And so without the jurisdiction to make those changes, our committee could not consider that as a part of our bill. The legislative committees in the House and Senate have not acted on these proposed user fee impositions, and so there are no funds available to be allocated, as the President proposed, to pay for the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture. Nonetheless, our committee approved and suggested in our legislation to fund increases in the Food Safety and Inspection Service's account. So our appropriation that is recommended by this committee for Food Safety and Inspection Service activities amounts to $605,149,000, as compared with the administration's request for funding the Food Safety and Inspection Service of $149,566,000. That is more than $350 million in additional funding that this committee has proposed than what the President recommended be appropriated for that activity.”