Marcy Kaptur: “Mr. Chairman, along with our very able chairman, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen), I rise in opposition to this…”

“Mr. Chairman, along with our very able chairman, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen), I rise in opposition to this amendment in the area of research. One of the great gifts that America has given the world is our agricultural research. There is no more productive Nation agriculturally on Earth than our own. This has not happened by accident. When the country was founded and we tried to master the plains and people moved westward and so forth, even until today, we try to understand the ecosystem and its function; and we know we could never really control it, but we try to live in harmony with it. I am always someone who is a very strong supporter of research for the Nation, whether it is medical research, whether it is research related to space science, or certainly in the area of living tissue, whether that be plant tissue or, in fact, human tissue research. My record is very clear on that. The gentleman has picked one set of accounts called Special Research Grants, and for the record, I just wanted to point out that if we look at all research within the U.S. Department of Agriculture and all agriculture programs, there is, indeed, a prejudice toward row crop production, corn, wheat, feed grains, that runs through the general performance of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”