[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21340-21341]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                       AGRICULTURE APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would like to address two issues 
tonight. One is the last-minute amendments that were made to the 
Agriculture appropriations bill last week, and a statement concerning 
the conference report for the fiscal year 2002 energy and water 
appropriations. I do not intend to spend too much time because I know 
my colleagues are inconvenienced.
  But one of the reasons I am having to give this statement now is 
because last Thursday night we sat around. All the Senators were 
sitting around and when I asked what we were waiting for they said: The 
managers' package of amendments.
  Finally the managers' package showed up. Everyone was in line to vote 
so we could get out of here. Guess what. They asked unanimous consent 
for the adoption of the management package--the manager of the bill, 
the Senator from Wisconsin. I said: Reserving the right to object, what 
is in it? Does anybody know what is in it?
  Of course that was met with a resounding silence. So I informed my 
colleague at that time I was very worried about a managers' package 
that none of us had seen, and I was worried that there might be 
provisions in it that I and others might find objectionable.
  Then I was told there were 35 amendments included in the managers' 
package. Let's remember that a managers' package is supposed to be 
technical corrections to the overall bill. I want to tell my colleagues 
what went on last Thursday night and the reason this system has lurched 
out of control. It is a disgrace, I say to my colleagues; it is a 
disgrace.
  To reiterate, at the tail end of last week's proceedings, the 
managers for the agriculture appropriations bill ``cleared'' a package 
of 35 amendments to be included in the final Senate bill. Again, these 
are 35 amendments that none of the other Senators voting on the bill 
had received any information about, nor had any opportunity to review.
  While I did not object at the time to approving these amendments by 
unanimous consent, I was very concerned about the nature of these 
amendments. As it turns out, I had good reason to be concerned. Of 
these 35 amendments, about 15 of these amendments included direct 
earmarked spending or objectionable legislative riders. These 
additional earmarks amount to an extra $8 million in porkbarrel 
spending--on top of the $372 million already included by the 
appropriators in the Senate bill.
  Mr. President, I understand that the managers for a bill have the 
privilege to add and remove certain provisions to a bill in order to 
move it along the process, or agree to clarifying technical amendments. 
I am not singling out the managers for the agriculture appropriations 
bill because the negotiation process is a part of any bill under 
consideration.
  However, this particular situation involves a direct spending measure 
and should require higher scrutiny in approving federal funds, which 
are normally considered in the committee process to ensure that 
projects are authorized and approved by the Congress. This should be 
true of any of the appropriations or budget bills we consider.
  Unfortunately, there is no way for us to tell if these last-minute 
earmarks were included because of their national priority or merit. 
They are simply added on, either in attempts to gain support to move 
the bill or tack on earmarks that might not pass legislative review.
  Some of my colleagues may be interested to know what amendments were 
included in the last-minute roundup in the manager's package. Let me 
give you a sample:
  Relief for sugar growers from paying a required marketing assessment;
  Special consideration provided to the State of Alaska--that should 
surprise a lot of my colleagues--for income qualifications for housing 
for individuals under 18;
  There is another surprise: an increase in the earmark for West 
Virginia State College by more than $500,000, and including additional 
language for preferential consideration to this same college by 
designating it as an 1890 institution;
  Expansion of subsidies for sweet potato producers and horse-breeder 
loans;
  Earmark of $230,000 to purchase conservation easements in Kentucky 
and $230,000 earmark to the University of Kentucky. There may be a 
little bell rung here. A little trip down memory lane. These states, 
just by pure coincidence, are the states which the appropriators 
represents;
  Funding for repairs caused by an avalanche in Valdez, Alaska;
  Directive language to give special consideration to the Tanana River 
in Alaska;
  Earmark of $500,000 for Oklahoma State University;
  Language limiting the import of fish and fish products.
  I am greatly concerned about this process. I tell the appropriators 
now I will not allow a vote until I have seen the managers' package of 
amendment. If they don't like it, look at what we adopted last night.
  I am gravely troubled by the managers' insertion into this bill the 
latter provision that would effectively ban all imports of Vietnamese 
catfish to the United States. Vietnamese catfish constitute an 
important part of our catfish consumption in the United States. 
Americans like to eat them. Moreover, the guiding principle of the 
recently ratified, and historic, United States-Vietnam Bilateral Trade 
Agreement was to open our markets to each other's products.
  To my deep dismay, a midnight amendment inserted by the managers on 
behalf of several Senators with wealthy catfish growers in their states 
violates our solemn trade agreement with Vietnam. With a clever trick 
of Latin phraseology and without any mention of Vietnam, these southern 
Senators single-handedly undercut American trade policy in a troubling 
example of the very parochialism we have urged the Vietnamese 
Government to abandon by ratifying the bilateral trade agreement. 
Vietnamese catfish are no different than American catfish by 
nutritional and safety standards--but they are different in the eyes of 
the large, wealthy agribusinesses on whose behalf this provision was 
slipped into the agriculture appropriations bill. After preaching for 
years to the Vietnamese about the need to get government out of 
micromanaging the economy, we have sadly implicated ourselves in the 
very sin our trade policy ostensibly rejects.
  Sweet potatoes, sugar, catfish, horse-breeders, and dozens of 
amendments passed without seeing the light of day.

[[Page 21341]]

  Mr. President, I ask this memo from the Department of Health and 
Human Services be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                               Washington, DC,

                                                  August 30, 2000.
     Subject: Acceptable market names for Pangasius spp.

     From: Scott Rippey, Office of Seafood
     To: Whom it may concern
       There have been several recent inquiries regarding the 
     acceptable market names for a number of Pangasius spp., and 
     particularly for Pangasius bocourti. The intent of this memo 
     is to provide a brief history on the subject as well as to 
     list the currently acceptable market names for several of 
     these species. This memo supercedes all previous FDA 
     correspondence on Pangasius nomenclature.
       In March 1999, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) asked 
     for guidance on an appropriate market name for P. bocourti. 
     Since this imported fish was relatively new to interstate 
     commerce, there was no existing acceptable market name (as 
     would generally be described in the FDA Seafood List) for 
     this species. From information provided by NFI (including 
     material on this fish from Vietnamese sources), the FDA 
     Office of Seafood accepted ``basa,'' ``bocourti,'' or 
     ``bocourti fish'' as market names for this freshwater fish. 
     This decision was expressed in a memo, dated March 11, 1999, 
     from FDA to NFI.
       More recently, there have been a number of requests made to 
     FDA to allow the use of the term ``catfish'' for this 
     species. The Pangasius species are members of the family 
     Schilbidae. According to the American Fisheries Society World 
     Fishes Important to North Americans. AFS Special Publication 
     21, American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, Maryland, p. 63.): 
     ``The schilbids, here taken to include the Pangasiidae, are 
     freshwater catfishes of Africa and southern Asia.'' As such, 
     FDA's Office of Seafood will not object to the use of the 
     name catfish, when used appropriately, to describe these 
     species.

  Mr. McCAIN. I will read a portion.

       More recently there have been a number of requests made to 
     FDA to allow the term ``catfish'' for these species. Species 
     are members of the family--

  Et cetera, saying there is no difference between the catfish that are 
raised in Vietnam and the catfish that the agribusinesses have. The 
agribusinesses, however, have advertised, ``Never trust a catfish with 
a foreign accent.''

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