[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 23066]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     ON AGRICULTURE APPROPRIATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise to object this evening to the 
manipulation of the leadership of this body, particularly the Speaker, 
Mr. Hastert, and the majority leader of the other body, Mr. Lott, that 
is essentially disenfranchising the membership of this body with regard 
to one of the most important issues before us, and, that is, meeting 
the needs of rural America, the disaster affected regions of our 
country, our farmers, who are experiencing historically low prices and 
bad weather, sort of twin eviscerators, that we are witnessing the 
hemorrhaging of equity out of rural America.
  For the record and for the American people and hopefully for my 
fellow Members, I come to the floor tonight to recount what has been 
happening here sort of below the surface where the press is generally 
not picking up on it.
  Employing what certainly must be the most unusual committee process I 
have ever experienced in my 17 years here in the House, the Republican 
leadership of this House has basically taken the drafting authority of 
our appropriations agriculture subcommittee away from our membership. 
Last week, the Republican leadership of this House as well as the 
Senate subcommittee twice recessed our conference committee because 
they could not reach agreement on the Republican side of the aisle on 
at least three provisions relating to regional compacts regarding milk, 
sanctions on terrorist states, and the level of disaster assistance 
that is really necessary in our country to meet the needs of our 
farmers in rural communities coast to coast. Our subcommittee has not 
met since last Wednesday due to that disorganization. Then over the 
weekend and early this week, Speaker Hastert and Senator Lott, their 
offices began drafting something for floor action. That effort is now 
being circulated in the form of a committee report that a majority of 
House subcommittee Republicans thus far, as of 5 p.m. today, had 
refused to sign, and which no Democrat had seen at all, certainly not 
those of the subcommittee of jurisdiction where we have legal 
responsibility to meet our obligations to the American people.
  The Republican leadership appears to be deal-making on such matters 
as mandatory price reporting, for example, to try to get a majority of 
the members on their side of the aisle to sign on to that report. The 
difficulty is that if that happens, let us say they make enough deals 
to bring that bill to the floor, that will be brought to the floor 
without our subcommittee membership in conference being allowed to 
amend and discuss under regular order as is required by the rules of 
this institution. Thus, Democrats for sure will not be able to offer 
amendments on such critical issues as the fairness and the adequacy of 
the formulas and the commodities and sectors to be covered in the bill, 
as well as the economic level of assistance and disaster assistance 
titles of the bill, which are extremely expensive and depending on how 
they are drafted benefit certain regions of the country and certain 
sectors more than others. We will not be able to deal with the 
sanctions issue, we will not be able to deal with many of the other 
titles of the bill that our members wanted a chance to discuss. We will 
only be left with the option on this floor of taking that report and 
being given a moment in time to vote to recommit it back to conference, 
which obviously has been recessed, if we do not like something that is 
in that report.
  As of Tuesday at 5 o'clock, now it is 6:25 here in Washington, the 
minority membership of the committee does not have a copy of the 
working document, at a time when rural America is in crisis. I have 
really been working with the leadership on our side of the aisle and I 
have pleaded with the leadership on the other side of the aisle to let 
us go back to regular order.
  This is wrong, this is not the way to run the Nation, and really what 
you find out is in the end that good government is good politics. If we 
use the full membership of this institution, if we each bring our 
experiences to the table, which is what a conference committee is 
supposed to be for, in the end we produce legislation that meets the 
needs of all corners and all quarters of our country. This is really 
the wrong way to do business.
  Today we had to pass a continuing resolution to keep this institution 
and the country operating for the next 2 weeks in order that these 
respective bills might be finished. The Agriculture appropriation bill 
this year is


one of the most important we will bring before this body. These 
procedures that have been used are completely atypical. I would beg the 
leadership to go back to regular order.

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