WC Georgia News

WASHINGTON – Congressman Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (GA-02), the Ranking Member of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food & Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, opposed the Fiscal Year 2024 funding bill for Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA, and Related Agencies during its consideration by the U.S. House Appropriations Committee.

“This bill endangers our ability to produce the safest, most abundant, and affordable food, fiber, medicine, and medical devices upon which every American relies. It will risk our supply chain resilience, deprive hungry women and children, jeopardize access to clean water, strip financial assistance from financially distressed farmers, and raise the cost of energy for rural businesses and families,” said Ranking Member Bishop. “It is a retreat from the robust investment that America’s agriculture industry needs – from education and research to farm subsidies and protections against diseases and invasive species. It risks undermining U.S. agriculture which contributes well over a trillion dollars to our country’s economy as it touches the lives of every American.”

The bill also broke with the negotiated, bipartisan spending levels agreed to by Democrats and Republicans as part of the debt ceiling law that Congress approved just two weeks ago. This bill is a drastic step backwards, dropping funding to 2007 levels. The Republican bill:

• Strips 104,000 economically distressed farm loan borrowers from assistance they are expecting, including 430 farmers in Georgia
• Underfunds the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program for 2024 and cuts the fruits and vegetable voucher program – hurting 4.6 million women and children and costing American farmers $1.2 billion in lost revenue
• Eliminates funding for the 1% Distressed Communities Program for small towns who cannot afford water and sewer renovations to get arsenic and lead out of their drinking water
• Cuts funding for water and waste disposal projects by 32% and direct housing loans for rural Americans by 28%, which means killing 165 clean water and sewer projects and preventing nearly 2,800 rural families across the country from getting a loan to afford a home
• Zeroes out vital programs, such as the Healthy Forests Reserve Program, Watershed and Flood Prevention Program, and Urban Agriculture Program
• Reduces the ReConnect program for expanded broadband internet services by $88 million
• Guts over $1 billion in investments for rural electric cooperatives to provide affordable energy for rural communities and cuts $500 million from the Rural Energy for America Program, raising energy costs for 15,000 rural small businesses across the country

Ranking Member Bishop urged his colleagues to make improvements to the bill and reject Republican riders rescinding funds meant to ensure equitable access for all Americans to USDA programs. He offered an amendment to strike all rural electric co-operative and distressed borrowers rescissions, but it failed on a party-line vote. He also chastised Republican efforts to inject non-germane, dog-whistle messaging provisions into the funding bill.

“I want to believe that all of us want the best for our country,” noted Ranking Member Bishop. “I believe that if we reasonably look to each other – and I appreciate the fact that the Chairman has been willing to sit down and talk about it – but I hope we can find some middle ground because this bill does not meet the challenges with which the American people are faced.”

Every Spring, the House Appropriations Committee’s twelve subcommittees begin preliminary markups of discretionary spending for the following fiscal year budget. After subcommittee markups, the bills move to full Committee markup. Once approved by the Appropriations Committee, the funding bills are brought to the full U.S. House of Representatives for consideration.

Original source can be found here.