[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 105 (Tuesday, June 24, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   FOOD, CONSERVATION, AND ENERGY ACT OF 2008--VETO MESSAGE FROM THE 
          PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (H. DOC. NO. 110-125)

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 18, 2008

  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the override of the 
President veto. As a conferee on the farm bill I worked hard to ensure 
that this bill includes significant improvements to the food assistance 
program via the nutrition title. A nation with the agricultural 
abundance we enjoy should not tolerate hunger among its people. This 
legislation makes important progress in that regard.
  Many of its nutrition provisions are important and deserve mention. 
In the interests of time, however, I will not go into them all. One of 
the positive aspects of the protracted process of passing the bill is 
that all Members have had ample opportunity to review the conference 
report and floor statements surrounding its passage. This is large and 
complex legislation, and the legislative history accumulated on its 
first passage and first override is an invaluable guide to Members.
  I found particularly helpful the statements of the distinguished 
chairman of the Nutrition Subcommittee, Mr. Baca, and his distinguished 
fellow conferee from the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Berman. Among other 
things, they pointed out that this legislation takes decisive steps to 
preserve the longstanding ability of households on the food stamp 
program to seek help through the judicial system when Federal rules on 
how the program is to be administered are not being met. Specifically, 
the bill provides explicit recognition of applicants' and recipients' 
suits to enforce the Food Stamp Act, now the Food and Nutrition Act, 
food stamp regulations, and civil rights regulations.
  This is the right thing to do and it is important. In light of the 
Gonzaga and Sandoval cases, some have argued that Congress did not 
provide this right to injured households and that instead only USDA can 
require States to change practices that do not comply with the Act or 
regulations. Those cases were about different statutes and different 
programs. Nonetheless, recent decisions out of Ohio and New York either 
questioned the enforceability of Federal regulations or imposed special 
hurdles plaintiffs must surmount, such as showing a particular degree 
of egregiousness on the part of defendants. These cases are radical 
departures from the history of this program and Congress's oft-
demonstrated intent.
  I agree with Representatives Baca and Berman that the Food Stamp 
Program's needs are different from those in which private rights of 
action are narrowly construed. And, over the years Congress has 
recognized that. Individuals that received, or wished to receive, food 
assistance brought numerous cases against State and local authorities 
in the 1970s to enforce provisions of the Food Stamp Act, its 
implementing regulations, and even USDA's certification manual. They 
did this because USDA lacked the resources to force States to comply 
with its guidance and directives, including basic services standards 
such as emergency food stamps for the neediest. When Congress wrote the 
Food Stamp Act of 1977, it analyzed the results of that litigation in 
detail, approving some results and writing the statute to reach a 
different result from others. A similar pattern has continued to this 
day.
  We set high standards for the States, counties and localities that 
run these programs. We do that because they are serving our most 
vulnerable citizens with tens of billions of Federal dollars. The high 
standards of compliance that we apply to State and local administration 
of the program can be seen in our payment accuracy and quality control 
measurement system, one of the most extensive in the Federal 
Government. This system, however, does not give equal or adequate 
weight to improper denials of benefits as it does to payment errors to 
eligible households. And it does not at all address violations of the 
procedures set out in the statute and regulations. For example, quality 
control does not deal with a State's failure to operate a proper fair 
hearing system, with its improper disclosure of households' 
confidential information, or with its delay in processing applications 
beyond statutory and regulatory deadlines.
  Claimants' litigation has proven the ideal complement to the quality 
control system. Where a program is being run badly in a locality, or 
statewide, a court can issue a corrective injunction to require the 
State to come into compliance with Federal regulations. This is 
particularly important in cases where the violation may not have 
resulted in a denial of benefits, such as violations of privacy 
protections or of the requirement that only State merit systems workers 
make decisions about households' ability to receive benefits.
  Our goal has never been to punish States and so we do not concern 
ourselves with why the program is out of compliance. We merely seek to 
ensure that States comply with Federal rules when administering this 
program. Litigation has proven time and again that it is the ideal 
vehicle for that. Past Federal appellate decisions from places such as 
Virginia and Oregon have it exactly right: State and local 
administrators need to comply fully in every case.
  There is no half-way or partial compliance with the programs' rules. 
We agree with past federal appellate decisions from places such as 
Virginia and Oregon that state and local administrators must comply 
with the rules in each and every case. States must deliver benefits 
consistent with the program's regulations and law to ensure that the 
most vulnerable and needy are protected and supported as they seek to 
participate in the program. Litigation has proven time and again that 
it is the ideal vehicle to enforce compliance where States are only 
partially meeting program standards.
  In other programs, the solution to non-compliance may be reducing or 
terminating federal funds. That is still possible in these programs, 
but it cannot be a mainstay of enforcement activities. We learned that 
withdrawing Federal funding led to worse, not better, program 
administration, depriving States of the resources they needed to 
correct their problems at the worse possible time. Accordingly, in the 
last farm bill we modified quality control to place much less emphasis 
on reducing funding to states. USDA over the years has similarly felt 
that withholding funding even for serious violations is often 
counterproductive.
  It should be clear that the long history of congressional approval of 
litigation by needy individuals supports the continuation of that 
regulation. The statute's entitlement is closely linked with States' 
obligation to comply with Federal regulations. Particularly with some 
States embarking on radical changes in their administration of the 
program, closing offices and turning key functions over to private 
contractors, it is crucial that the program's intended low-income 
beneficiaries have access to courts to test the legality of those 
changes. Although I would have preferred to have expanded the 
protections on public administration of the program, as the House bill 
would have done, our acceptance of the Senate package was a compromise 
that ensures households' access to the courts to test these States' 
practices under the current restrictions.

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