Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agency Appropriations Act, 2027
Floor Speech
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. 8646, and that I may include tabular material on the same.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, I rise today to bring before the House H.R. 8646, the fiscal year 2027 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agency Appropriations bill.
I thank Appropriations Committee Chairman Cole for his leadership and quickly moving the fiscal year 2027 appropriations process forward.
I also recognize the ranking member of the full committee, Ms. DeLauro, and the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Subcommittee ranking member, Mr. Bishop, for their work in getting us to this point.
I appreciate the conversations Mr. Bishop and I have had, and while we may not agree on everything in the bill, I know that we are much closer to agreement than some of today's debate and rhetoric may show.
For fiscal year 2027, the subcommittee's discretionary allocation is $26.27 billion, a $380 million, or 1.4 percent, decrease from fiscal year 2026 enacted levels.
In a setting of $2 trillion deficits, these modest spending reductions are necessary.
This legislation reflects a clear, necessary commitment to fiscal responsibility, while ensuring that America's farmers, ranchers, and rural communities remain a top priority and that all Americans have access to a safe food and drug supply.
This legislation builds on the successful efforts of the Trump administration to root out fraud, waste, and abuse, shrink the Federal bureaucracy, and make USDA programs more farmer friendly.
It sets USDA on a responsible and sustainable spending path that will make both the Department and our Nation stronger.
Under President Trump's and Secretary Rollins' leadership, every taxpayer dollar will be spent in the pursuit of putting all American farmers and ranchers first.
I would like to highlight a few areas where the legislation supports the administration's efforts to refocus the Department on its core mission by prioritizing essential functions in a fiscally responsible manner.
The bill provides $1.16 billion for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, to support the Department's efforts to protect our producers from highly pathogenic avian influenza, New World screwworm, and other foreign plant and animal diseases.
The legislation continues to invest in the delivery of farm programs, disaster assistance, and crop insurance to farmers by prioritizing funding for farmer-facing functions.
Following the budget request, the bill moves $50 million of Farm Service Agency IT funds from FSA to the Office of the Chief Information Officer to continue to invest in and implement USDA's One Farmer, One File Initiative.
After accounting for this transfer of funds, no matter what you will hear from the nay-sayers, the bill actually increases overall funding for FSA staff, including for county office staff.
The bill provides important investments in critical agricultural research that will keep our producers on the cutting edge of technology and production practices.
We maintain funding for USDA's flagship competitive grant program, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, and protect capacity funding for our land grant universities to ensure our farmers and ag workforce remain competitive with China.
This legislation continues to fund vital rural development programs, including critical infrastructure investments in water and wastewater systems and housing programs, as well as increasing the loan authority for the business and industry and rural electric programs due to increased demand.
For the Food and Drug Administration, the bill provides $3.36 billion in direct appropriations. With increased user fees, FDA has a total budget of $7.1 billion to enable the agency to keep food, drugs, and medical devices safe and effective, as well as advance the Make America Healthy Again initiatives highlighted in the President's budget.
Finally, let me discuss WIC. The bill provides full funding of $8 billion for WIC, which is about 3 percent lower than last year's enacted level, but USDA data clearly shows that WIC participation has been declining and is not projected to be as high as originally estimated for fiscal year 2027. USDA also expects to have sufficient carryover funds to meet all the program needs, if necessary.
With lower participation estimates and increased carryover funding, the $8 billion allocated will fully fund the program. Let me say it one more time. Despite what the naysayers will claim, WIC is fully funded for its needs. No women or their children will lose or be denied coverage.
I believe a credible evaluation of this legislation will conclude that it balances the funding needs of the USDA, FDA, and CFTC while being responsible stewards of our constituents' hard-earned tax dollars. As Mr. Bishop has said, this is a good faith effort to meet the moment, and there are critical things that warrant support.
I am pleased that the bill received bipartisan support out of committee, and we want to keep working with the minority as we move forward in this process.
In closing, I ask for Members' support of this legislation.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chairman, first, I want to reemphasize that WIC is fully funded. Given the decreased participation rate and fully funding the reserve, WIC is fully funded.
Mr. Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Madam Chair, I will just remind the Chair that we actually provide an additional $250 million in business and industry loans for rural business and industry, and given that there are 100,000 fewer participants in WIC, we fully fund the program.
Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Newhouse).
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Madam Chair, I remind the Chair that if you have over 100,000 fewer WIC recipients, why would you budget for them?
Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Alford).
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chair, just to keep the record straight, we actually increased funding for New World screwworm by $4.5 million this year. We count on timely amendments being submitted, but when you submit something just before the bill comes to the floor--we will work with the gentlewoman and we will work as we go through the process to address the threat. We have been addressing it, and we will continue to do it. But that is the reason why the amendment was not included.
With regards to the FDA, the comment was made that somehow we are decreasing funding to the FDA. Just so everyone understands, Madam Chair, there are two sources of funding for the FDA: discretionary funding and the funding based on user fees.
When the funding based on user fees goes way up, we can decrease the discretionary to keep the level adequate. Overall funding for the FDA is up $150 million this year. It has not decreased. Yes, the discretionary part has decreased. But we are making the companies who use the FDA pay the balance, and I think that is good for the American taxpayer.
However, just to resolve anyone's fears, our FDA funding goes up $150 million under this bill.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chair, let's address the nutrition programs as yet once again.
The SNAP participation rate year over year from February '25 to February '26, that is the last month we have data from, is down 7 percent.
Thank goodness 7 percent fewer Americans actually need the food, need SNAP assistance. So what did we do? We decreased the budget 6 percent. We actually didn't even decrease the budget as much as the participation rate went down. SNAP is fully funded.
Let's talk about WIC. February '25 to February '26--the last month we have available is February '26. Year over year, a decrease of 150,000 people on WIC. That is about 2.5 percent. That is exactly what we decreased the budget by. Why would we budget for people who don't exist?
In the setting of a $2 trillion deficit, why would we put that money in a bill? We have a reserve, $150 million reserve in WIC. God forbid that participation rate goes up because of economic principles or maybe more Americans have children, the money is there. WIC and SNAP are fully funded for the participation rate. Anything else you hear is scary rhetoric.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chair, let's review some of the things we have heard and some of the facts about the bill.
I will start by saying that when Gallup polls the American public, the American public thinks that 43 cents out of every Federal dollar is wasted. That amounts to 43 percent of the Federal dollar wasted, in the minds of Americans. The President was elected to increase the efficiency of the Federal Government, realizing that Americans think 43 percent of the money is wasted.
Mr. Chair, this bill reduces the spending from the enacted level by 1.4 percent.
Now, Americans are probably going to be disappointed because they think that we are wasting 43 cents on a dollar, so why are you only cutting it by 1.4 percent? Because we carefully looked at the programs. We think that is the start we need to make to deliver the assistance that our farmers, ranchers, and rural populations need, given the context that we have to make the government work more efficiently. We think that is what this bill does.
Let's talk about the wastewater. Again, there are two buckets of what affect water and wastewater management in rural areas: a bucket of grants and a bucket of loans.
The grants have been decreased somewhat, but grants make up 10 percent, roughly, of the amount of money available for wastewater programs in rural areas.
We maintained a billion dollars of loan authority for those programs. It was maintained in the bill. We recognized that these rural communities need help, and we generously make loans available to the communities that could not otherwise find funding anywhere else.
We talked about the FDA. The FDA has a $150 million increase when you count on the fact that what we did is said if companies using the FDA for licensing and approval are paying a user fee, and those user fees are going up, the amount collected is going up, we can decrease the amount that the average American taxpayer has to throw into that kitty. That kind of makes sense.
I think that is what the American taxpayer would want. If those drug companies are making money on licensing those drugs, they should pay more of the cost of licensing the drugs. That is exactly what happens under this bill.
We talked about WIC and SNAP. I will just reemphasize that the participation rate in both programs goes down, so we lowered the amount that we allocate to those programs proportional to the decrease in participation rates. That is just good accounting for the American people.
Mr. Chair, this bill achieves a balance that is not easy with a $2 trillion deficit, a $40 trillion debt, and an American public that believes the Federal Government wastes 43 cents of every dollar. This achieves the balance we need to maintain funding to the programs that are necessary and to make sure that we deliver for our farmers, ranchers, and rural communities. Again, we delivered to the nutrition programs while keeping in mind that we have to be very good stewards of the taxpayer dollars because there aren't enough of them to go around.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to House Resolution 1333, I offer amendments en bloc as the designee of Chairman Cole.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of this amendment. This is a bipartisan set of amendments en bloc, which includes priorities from Members on both sides of the aisle.
I appreciate Ranking Member Bishop working with us on these amendments and ask for your support.
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Malliotakis).
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Boebert).
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao).
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Mr. HARRIS of Maryland. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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