{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://bishop.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-bishop-leads-bipartisan-opposition-to-bill-that-jeopardizes-the-safety-and-affordability-of-food-fiber-and-medicine-for-all-americans", "CONGRESSMAN BISHOP LEADS BIPARTISAN OPPOSITION TO BILL THAT JEOPARDIZES THE SAFETY AND AFFORDABILITY OF FOOD, FIBER, AND MEDICINE FOR ALL AMERICANS", "2023-09-29", "2023", "2023-09", "Democrat", "House", "GA", "Sanford D. Bishop, Jr.", "B000490", "bishop.house.gov", "bishop", "https://bishop.house.gov/media-center/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Congressman Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (GA02), Ranking Member of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), and Related Agencies, led bipartisan opposition to H.R. 4368, the Fiscal Year 2024 Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA and Related Agencies funding bill. The bill was defeated last night by a bipartisan vote, 191-237. The bill also failed to secure enough support to move through the House earlier this summer.\n\nIn leading the opposition during debate on the bill this week, Congressman Bishop outlined the detrimental effect it would have on families, communities, and industries that affect the lives of every American, every day, in every state across the country. His remarks, which highlighted draconian cuts and harmful amendments, made it impossible for many members to support the bill, both Democrats and Republicans.\n\nNearly half (4 of 9) of the Republicans on the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA, and Related Agencies as well as 11 of 29 Republicans on the U.S. House Agriculture Committee voted against H.R. 4368. Altogether, two-thirds of both the agriculture appropriations and authorizing committees joined Congressman Bishop in opposing the harmful bill.\n\nWATCH: Congressman Bishop Outlines Shortcomings of FY24 Ag, Rural Development & FDA Funding Bill During House Debate\n\nThe following is a transcript of his remarks, as delivered:\n\nEvery day, when I anticipate the Agriculture appropriations bill coming to the floor. I wake up with my usual admonition that \u201cthis is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.\u201d\n\nBut today, as we take up this Agriculture bill, it stretches my faith to say that this is a good day because I rise in very, very strong opposition to H.R. 4368.\n\nAs the Ranking Member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, I am extremely disappointed to see this bill does not meet the needs of Americans who rely on this funding to ensure safe food and medicines, healthy and resilient farmlands, and strong rural infrastructure.\n\nThe programs contained in the Agriculture funding bill are important for all Americans, and they affect our country in so many ways:\n\nThese programs help Americans by helping American farmers produce the highest quality, safest, most abundant, and most economical food and fiber in the world, through assistance provided by the Farm Service Agency in almost every county in America.\n\nThey help future generations by funding conservation practices which preserve our farmland and our natural resources for the years to come.\n\nThese programs are essential to those who live in rural areas and ensure quality of life through access to clean drinking water, electricity, telecommunication, broadband, sewer infrastructure, and housing.\n\nThey help feed every American \u2013 including our most vulnerable families, children, and seniors in difficult times.\n\nThey fund USDA meat and poultry inspectors and FDA inspectors of all other food products, so that the food on American\u2019s tables is safe and nutritious.\n\nIt funds the CFTC and the Farm Credit Administration, so this bill affects our financial space.\n\nI cannot think of a subcommittee with as broad a reach as our bill has. And a bill with such a reach deserves to have these programs adequately funded.\n\nHowever, the bill passed in our full committee markup only provided $17.8 billion in funding, which takes us back to the 2007 funding level.\n\nThat is entirely inadequate for the needs of the American people, and it had no chance of being passed into law when it came out of committee.\n\nUnfortunately, rather than moving in a more productive direction, the majority used a procedural gimmick to impose even greater cuts of 69% to the Food for Peace Program and 14.2% to all other discretionary programs. Instead of improving the bill, the Rules Committee made it even worse.\n\nIn total, the cuts to the bill have reduced funding 41 percent lower than last year. The bill before us today will take us back to 2001 levels. That is totally irresponsible.\n\nThe bill would harm rural America by taking money from programs supporting rural communities, such as:\n\nIt cuts $500 million from the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) and it eliminates grants under the program, which will raise energy costs for over 15,000 rural farmers and small businesses.\n\nIt takes $1 billion from Rural Electric Cooperatives \u2013 900 cooperatives that serve over 40 million people in 48 states.\n\nIt slashes $800 million from the WIC program \u2013 which drastically also cuts cash value voucher benefit for fruit and vegetable purchases, affecting nearly 5 million hungry women and children.\n\nIt strips loan assistance needed by 100,000 economically distressed farmers which could literally cost folks the family farm!\n\nIt cuts Rural Development programs by over 40%, which means thousands of rural families will no longer be able to get a loan to afford a home, hundreds of projects meant to provide clean water and wastewater systems will be eliminated, and thousands of families will not be able to turn on the tap and count on drinkable water.\n\nIt completely guts the Food for Peace international food aid program. It cuts the McGovern Dole Program by 14%, which will further exacerbate the global hunger and instability and the risk of conflicts abroad, which will weaken American security.\n\nThis bill also strips the Secretary (of Agriculture), as you have heard, of discretionary use of the Commodity Credit Corporation funding.\n\nThe CCC is a tool to benefit, authorized by law, to benefit our farmers and the thousands of church and community food banks that it helps to fund, no matter which party is in the White House. The only folks that suffer when any administration is not allowed to use the CCC at its discretion are our ag producers and American families.\n\nOur farmers benefited tremendously under the Trump Administration when the Secretary of Agriculture, Purdue, used the CCC to give our farmers relief from the trade wars with China.\n\nAs I look at it, the path this bill has taken so far, and how the proposed amendments we will see tonight, would make it even worse.\n\nI ask myself:\n\nFor any farmers watching tonight who are trying to do what is best for their land, their business, and their family, what will they see?\n\nFor people in rural communities facing the challenges of providing clean water, affordable housing, and dependable utilities, what will they see?\n\nFor those same communities trying to ensure their law enforcement and first responders have the vehicles, communications equipment, and the other resources they need to keep their communities safe, what will they see?\n\nFor struggling families trying to put food on the table for their children, what will they see?\n\nSadly, if those Americans are watching us tonight, what they will see is a majority that is focused on overriding medical science, to take away a woman\u2019s freedom to control her own reproductive health choices, but not a majority focused on ensuring those women and their children are able to afford food.\n\nThey saw a majority focused on an undefined, so-called Critical Race Theory while pushing this bill to jeopardize the safety of our food and our medicine, slowing down our supply chain, and ironically \u2013 making these things harder to get and more expensive to buy.\n\nMake no mistake, the majority would have a person watching at home to believe that this bill fights against some undeserving citizens who do not need the help. But the hard truth is that this bill is a nuclear bomb against the needs of every single American.\n\nThe majority wants the people distracted by their culture war while they cut the crucial programs that every American depends on for the safest, highest quality, the most affordable food, fiber, and medicine in the world.\n\nAnd it appears that tonight we will see more amendments from the majority that further push the bill in a terribly harmful direction.\n\nIt astonishes me that we are four days away from government shutdown, yet we are not debating a bipartisan bill to keep the government open.\n\nInstead, we are debating an extreme messaging bill that does nothing to bring us closer to the bipartisan agreement we will need to eventually pass a full-year government spending bill.\n\nI urge my colleagues to oppose this bill. And I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to craft a responsible bill which meets the needs of all Americans.\n\nI would like to thank my personal staff, including Tynesha Boomer, and the subcommittee staff, including Martha Foley, Alex Swann, and Tyler Coe for their hard work on this bill.\n\nI would like to thank the majority staff for their efforts, but I pray that the majority members of Congress and the majority in Congress will have an epiphany and deliver a much better work product to the American people by the end of this funding process.\n\nI reserve the balance of my time.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T00:37:48Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://bishop.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-bishop-leads-bipartisan-opposition-to-bill-that-jeopardizes-the-safety-and-affordability-of-food-fiber-and-medicine-for-all-americans"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.767851946875453, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}