[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6549]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      INCREASE IN CARGO PREFERENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Thompson of Pennsylvania). The Chair 
recognizes the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, we have challenges in the United States 
with the notion of how we are going to protect American-flagged ships, 
the capacity to be able, in times of national emergency, to provide the 
transport services that we need.
  I have been a supporter of the Jones Act. I think it is important to 
have cargo preference. I think it is important to be able to manage. I 
am interested in other areas that we might explore to be able to make 
sure that the United States is not at the mercy of other nations in 
times of emergency.
  I will say that I have been dismayed at recent activities to force, 
in the Coast Guard reauthorization, to increase the cargo preference 
for American food aid from its current level of 50 percent to 75 
percent. This is outrageous, and it is not the answer.
  The situation we face today is that we require this food to be 
delivered in American ships. It increases the delay in terms of when 
the food gets there, and we are competing with local communities.
  Mr. Speaker, in an ideal world, we would do what most international 
aid countries do when they deliver assistance. They use money to buy 
local products. This helps support local agriculture, and it provides 
the food when it is needed, not months later.
  The United States primarily delivers surplus commodities that we 
produce in the United States that are shipped halfway around the world, 
that arrive often too late, and it is in direct competition to local 
producers.
  It undercuts their capacity to take care of themselves, while our 
assistance gets there too late, and it increases the cost of doing so.
  Now, in times past, the government had reimbursed the cost 
differential. That was eliminated in the Budget Control Act, so that is 
gone, and we have had this provision that was snuck in. It was not 
widely debated. Members of the House and the Senate did not understand 
what was going on.
  We have had terrific leadership from Chairman Royce and Ranking 
Member Engel in the House Foreign Affairs Committee to try and focus on 
ways to be able to provide greater flexibility to United States aid, so 
we can help more people at less cost and not undercut their capacity to 
support themselves.
  Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that my colleagues will take a good, hard 
look at this provision. We need to make sure that this is removed, to 
at least go back to where it was at 50 percent; but more important, we 
ought to look at how we provide this food aid around the world.
  At a time when we are providing lavish support to American farmers 
and ranchers, they don't need the additional support to undercut 
production of food in some of the poorest and most desperate countries 
in the world.
  We ought to stretch those dollars. We ought to make sure that that 
aid arrives sooner, when it is needed; and we ought not to have this 
artificial mechanism that is both more expensive, less efficient, and 
most important, it hurts the people that we are trying to serve.
  There is bipartisan leadership in the House that is trying to fix 
this, working with NGOs around the country and around the world. We 
ought to roll up our sleeves and do this in a cooperative way and 
prevent undercutting these poor countries and eliminating the ability 
to get food to them quickly.

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