Annie Kuster

My fear is that if we don't make significant policy changes, we are going to risk losing all of the dairy farms.

We are literally at the end of the road here, in terms of the U.S., and the transportation and labor costs associated with bringing the feed to New Hampshire is very high.

We saw 19 dairy farms go out of commercial business in 2016 alone.

Maybe we could just get the feed a little closer to New England?

I think that information would be very helpful for the Committee, because in a bipartisan way, we will need to sell this to our colleagues that this is important spending, and that is not going to be popular this cycle.

If they are going to spend $1 trillion, let's make sure we are included.

We have been particularly concerned about what is happening to our dairy industry.

We are very proud to have a five percent increase in the number of new farmers in New Hampshire.

Congresswoman Kuster and Congressman Crawford introduced H.R. 1163, Improving Access to Conservation Act to fix this problem.

By doing a fire funding fix, what you are doing is freeing up money within the Forest Service...

I just want to echo my colleagues' comments about the impact of the outdoor community.

I particularly want to thank the GAO and the IG for their helpful reports.

Is there any reason--and I guess this is for Dr. Clancy--why the VA could not streamline this process and apply one standard to all facilities?

It seems what I'm hearing is that this is often just an added task.

And at least have consistency.

Can you talk to me more about both the program within CARA, encouraging VAs to reduce the use of opiate medication, or any other examples that you might have in the system?

Thank you for choosing this topic. I am particularly interested, as the cochair, the founding cochair, of our congressional Task Force to Combat the Heroin Epidemic.

As I say to my colleagues, heroin does not choose R's and D's. We can work together.

I am concerned, as I know many Americans are, about the impact of these immigration raids on our agricultural community.

Part of the problem for us is that the MPP uses the national average feed cost, and my question is, that fails to take into account the higher transportation and labor costs.

Sadly, we have witnessed 19 of our 120 dairy farms going out of the commercial dairy business as a result of a drought.

I just hope that this Committee will have the chance to indicate our concerns about the raids and the impact on the farm economy.

I just hope this technology is not obsolete by the time you get it in place.

I would take you up on the GAO's suggestion that we get quarterly reports.

So I just want to join those of us on both sides of the aisle about our frustration.