Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 6833, a short-term continuing resolution extending government funding through December 16th.

I oppose this CR for several reasons.

First, we should be here addressing the border crisis, the energy crisis, and the inflation crisis. This bill does nothing to fix any of these issues.

In fact, this bill actually bails out the Biden Administration for their failures and provides additional appropriations to put a band-aid on some of these problems for a few more months.

Madam Chair, thank you for yielding.

The revised allocations presented today do not change the spending levels that were adopted on a party-line vote last week. Because there are no substantive changes, I must once again oppose them.

It is unacceptable to Members on my side of the aisle to underfund our national defense while giving significant increases to the same social programs that received trillions of dollars over the last year. I hope we can find common ground as these bills move to the floor.

We will need to restore important language from prior bills, agree to remove controversial policy riders, and set responsible funding levels so that bills can get to the president's desk and be signed into law. I urge a no vote and yield back my time.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for yielding.

First, I want to thank Chairman Bishop and Acting Ranking Member Harris for their work on this appropriations bill that funds the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies. I also want to acknowledge the committee staff for their efforts.

While this bill funds many important programs, it is based on a funding level that passed the House without Republican support. In addition to concerns about spending, I have a few examples of problematic provisions that must be addressed as this particular bill moves through the process.

Thank you, Chair DeLauro. I want to thank you and Ranking Member Granger for your leadership in moving this process forward. I also appreciate the hard work of Chairman Bishop in crafting the fiscal year 2023 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that is before us today.

There are a number of programs and provisions in this bill that I support, such as funding for rural broadband programs, rural electrification and telecommunication loan programs, critical research programs, and protections to ensure we have safe food, drugs, and medical devices.