Anthony Weiner: “pictured on this chart is an Asian long- horned beetle. This is one of the many pests that are under the responsibility…”

“pictured on this chart is an Asian long- horned beetle. This is one of the many pests that are under the responsibility of APHIS, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. This is an insect that bores its way into trees, primarily in Illinois, in the northeast, and kills them. There is no way to stop this pest except by cutting down the tree. And we in New York and in New Jersey and Illinois have had to chop down a lot of them. What my amendment will do is to increase the funding for APHIS, to bring it up to the level that the Bush administration proposed in their preliminary budget. It is estimated that the amendment that we are offering today with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) and my colleagues from New York and others around the country, by increasing by $19 million, we will wind up preventing more than $700 billion worth of damage to trees throughout the country. This is not just a problem that will be solved for the Asian long- horned beetle. If you have the emerald ash borer in Indiana, Ohio or Michigan, or in the Pacific Coast, or suffer from sudden oak death in California or Oregon, or are dealing with the glassy-winged sharpshooter in California, or of course boll weevils throughout the South, all of these are pests which are having a dramatic impact on our economy, or is having a budget cut in this round to an unacceptable level. First let me say of the chairman and the ranking member, they are doing a lot with less and less.…”