H6224 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE September 20, 2012 

ultimately have to be paid for. The Fed softened the recession by its decisive actions 

during the panic of 2008. But the marginal 

benefits of its subsequent policy have almost 

certainly been small. We may find the policies that had little positive impact on the recovery today will have high costs, indeed, 

when they must be reversed in a full-blown 

expansion. 

There’s not a man or woman in this 

country, Mr. Speaker, who’s registered 

to vote who’s not thinking about their 

tax bill, who’s not thinking about the 

economy, who’s not thinking about job 

creation, and who’s not going to go to 

the polls and vote accordingly. Mr. 

Speaker, I encourage you to encourage 

your constituents, as I’m going to encourage mine, don’t just think about 

tax policy. Think about monetary policy. What we’re doing here in Washington to cut budgets, that’s what we’ll 

call fiscal policy. What the Federal Reserve is doing with its balance sheet 

and with interest rate, that’s going to 

be monetary policy. And it makes a 

difference. The decisions we make 

today have to be paid for tomorrow. 

Perhaps it’s the right thing to do 

today, but if it happens in secret, if it 

happens unbeknownst to the American 

taxpayer, the American job creator, 

the American jobholder, who will ultimately have to foot that bill, then it’s 

not the right course of action for 

America. 

Let’s have this debate. Let’s talk 

about it in the light of day. And let’s 

make that decision, Mr. Speaker. Balance those costs and those benefits and 

do what we know will be best for the 

American family for another generation to come. 

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back 

the balance of my time. 

f 

NANNY-STATE GOVERNMENT 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under 

the Speaker’s announced policy of January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the 

gentleman from Iowa (Mr. KING) for 30 

minutes. 

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is 

my honor and privilege to address you 

here on the floor of the United States 

House of Representatives and take up 

some of the issues that I think are so 

important to the dialogue before us 

here and the American people to consider as they listen to our discussion. 

A number of things weigh on me as I 

come to the floor tonight. And one of 

them is something that I think is 

emerging in the consciousness of the 

American people, Mr. Speaker, in a 

way that really wasn’t there before 

this administration took office, and 

that is the massive growth of the 

nanny state here in the United States 

of America. 

We’ve watched as regulation after 

regulation have crept in on our regular 

lives, and some of the things that I’ve 

spoken about with you in the past fall 

down along those lines. For example, 

the curlicue light bulb. The idea that 

the Federal Government could ban our 

100-watt light bulbs and prohibit us 

from buying our patriotic Edison light 

bulbs and require us instead to substitute for those curlicue mercuryladen light bulbs. 

Now I’ll point out, Mr. Speaker, that 

I have a good number of those—I’ll call 

them modern—light bulbs in my house. 

I put them where they make sense. And 

where they don’t make sense, I put in 

the patriotic Edison bulbs. If I need 

quick light to walk into a room for just 

a minute, I want to have an Edison 

bulb there, not a curlicue, so it lights 

up right away. I can shut it off right 

away. It’s not on much. It doesn’t cost 

much electricity. If I’m going to have a 

bulb that’s going to be on for quite a 

long time, then I want to have the energy-efficient bulb. That’s a simple decision that a consumer can make—and 

especially a well-informed consumer. 

But when you end up with a one-sizefits-all that comes from the Federal 

Government, you end up with a lot of 

bad decisions so that it all fits into one 

formula. That’s the light bulb. 

Another one is shower heads. Several 

months ago, the Federal Government 

fined three companies for selling shower heads that let too much water out. 

Think of that. Too much water. One 

size fits all. The water supply in let’s 

say Buffalo, up by Niagara, is different 

than the water in someplace like Tucson; different than someplace like New 

Orleans or Florida or Iowa. And so we 

have one-size-fits-all on shower heads. 

And here’s the brilliant presumption 

on the part of the nanny state Federal 

Government: the conclusion that in all 

cases water is going to be more valuable than time. So people can stand 

under that shower head and wait for 

their feet to get wet because over the 

broad calculation of 300 million people 

you will save some gallons of water 

that are more valuable to the mind of 

the nanny state—certainly, more valuable in the mind of the nanny state— 

than the time that it takes for someone to stand there and wait to get wet. 

Here’s another one. The 55 mile-anhour speed limit that was imposed a 

long time ago in this country under the 

belief that if we all drove 55 miles an 

hour we would save gas and that would 

help our energy independence and keep 

us less dependent upon foreign oil. So 

the Federal Government dialed the 

speed limit down to the ‘‘double 

nickle,’’ as we called it, and everybody 

in the country drove 55 for a long time, 

even on the interstates, with the misguided idea that gas was always worth 

more than time. 

So one day, Mr. Speaker, I was driving down the road in Iowa at 55 miles 

an hour and I came through this intersection on a county road and I could 

look in my mirror and see a mile in my 

mirror, not a car in sight. A lot of 

cornfields. Looked right, looked left. I 

could see a mile in either direction. I 

could see a mile ahead of me. I could 

cover 4 miles of road by looking out 

three windows and into a mirror. 

And there I am driving down the road 

looking at cornfields, which I love to 

look at, at 55 miles an hour. I thought, 

Why am I doing this? Well, it must be 

the nanny state that has imposed this 

on me. And I picked up my phone and 

called—now there’s a law against that 

in the nanny state—but I called my 

secretary in one of our offices and said, 

I want to know how many passenger 

miles are traveled on the rural roads in 

Iowa each year. Can you get me that 

number? She came back to me a little 

later and said, I can’t give you the passenger miles but I can give you the vehicle miles on rural roads. 

So I did one of those little calculations on my calculator that works out 

like this: if we all drove 65 miles an 

hour instead of 55 miles an hour, that’s 

10 miles an hour faster. You calculate 

how much sooner you arrive at your 

destination by driving 10 miles an hour 

faster. 

b 2020 

Then you calculate that each one of 

us on the day we were born was granted 

the actuarial number—at that time I 

figured it at 76 years—when you figure 

those hours that you have in your lifetime at 76 years and then you figure 

out how many hours you spend unnecessarily looking out the windshield at 

55 miles an hour, and you calculate the 

lifespan, and you divide it into the 

time saved and the miles that are traveled on rural roads in Iowa each year. 

And it came down to this: that if we 

drive 65 instead of 55, we will have 

saved 79.64 lifetimes of living, in other 

words, getting to our destination, 

doing something productive. That has 

value too. 

That calculation wasn’t made by the 

nanny state. The nanny state only calculated gas is always worth more than 

time. 

Not so in Germany where people get 

out on the Autobahn and drive as fast 

in some locations as they have the 

nerve to drive under the idea that you 

get them out on the highway, you get 

them off the highway, you get them 

out of the way where they’re not going 

to be congesting traffic, and you get 

people engaged in doing their regular 

living in life. 

That’s the speed limit, the shower 

nozzles, the curlicue light bulbs, all examples of the nanny state. 

But, Mr. Speaker, the examples of 

the nanny state have surpassed the 

imagination of almost every one of us 

that has common sense. 

When I look at what has come out of 

the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 

for example, the rule that cooperated 

with the Department of Labor, worked 

in conjunction with the Department of 

Labor, and I asked this question under 

oath of one of the Under Secretaries of 

the Department of Labor before the 

Small Business Committee, did the 

U.S. Department of Agriculture work 

in cooperation with the Department of 

Labor to produce these rules that 

would regulate farm youth labor? The 

answer was, yes, they worked in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture. 


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September 20, 2012 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H6225 

Ag is supposed to know about what 

goes on in farm families. So Ag worked 

with Labor and produced rules that 

said to parents you can no longer control your own children or manage your 

own children or entrust them to go to 

work for the neighbors even if those 

neighbors are aunts or uncles or grandparents of these children. 

So they wrote the rule that would 

prohibit farm youth, other than those 

that are working right there on a family farm for their parents, outside of 

that zone, farm youth were prohibited 

under the rule from being more than 6 

feet off the ground so they could go out 

and climb a tree, but they couldn’t go 

out there and get up on a scaffold and 

paint the undereaves of the machine 

shed, for example. 

They were prohibited from being engaged in any kind of herding of livestock in a confinement. So they 

couldn’t walk into a hog building, for 

example, and have any engagement 

there. They couldn’t herd livestock 

even outdoors from horseback or from 

any motorized vehicle. 

So you’d say to kids, you can’t ride 

horses out here if it has anything to do 

with what’s work. You might be able to 

do it recreationally, but not with work. 

I remember a rule coming at me from 

a convenience store several years ago, 

and all they wanted to do was just sell 

sandwiches and pizza and gas and do 

those things that come out of a regular 

convenience store. 

The Department of Labor went into 

the community and interviewed the 

high school students that were working 

there, learning a good work ethic, by 

the way, how to count change, how to 

hold up their end of the workload. 

They interviewed them and they 

asked them questions. For example, 

Have you ever worked after 7 o’clock 

on a school night? One or two of them 

said, yes, once or twice, and there were 

two violations of working after 7 

o’clock on a school night. 

Then it was, Have you ever operated 

the pizza dough maker? Well, no. None 

of them had operated the pizza dough 

maker, but once or twice, one or two of 

them said, yes, I washed the pizza 

dough maker, but I didn’t operate it. 

These kinds of silly things came out 

of the Department of Labor, and they 

levied a significant fine against this 

good family convenience store operation because they alleged that these 

youth had violated the rule on working 

past 7 o’clock on a school night and 

that they had not operated the pizza 

dough maker, but they had washed it. 

That little egg beater inside there that 

turns, they had washed that. That was 

too much of a risk for a 15-year-old to 

have their hands on something like 

that, surely. 

So they concluded that the rule 

reads: operator otherwise use. So washing the pizza dough maker turned into 

‘‘otherwise use,’’ and levy a fine 

against this family operation. 

Why would anybody stay in business 

if they had the nanny state gestapo 

hunting down their employees, interviewing them in their home, these kids 

that don’t have any idea why the Federal Government’s sticking their nose 

into something like this, a completely 

safe and harmless operation regulated 

by the Department of Labor when 

we’ve got all kinds of laws that can’t 

be enforced and aren’t enforced. We’ve 

got people doing that. 

Or here’s another thing that is idiocy 

on the part of our child labor laws and 

that is that a 17-year-old young man 

cannot get on the lawnmower and cut 

the grass around the gas station if he’s 

working for somebody else. Violates 

the rule. But he can get in a car that 

runs 120 miles an hour and turn the 

radio up and put his girlfriend over 

there next to him and drive down the 

road with one hand, talking and laughing. I didn’t say he was driving 120, I 

might point out, for those people who 

are willfully ignorant, Mr. Speaker, a 

car that has the capability of going 

that fast. We’d hand that vehicle over 

to somebody that’s that age, but they 

can’t run the lawnmower. This is going 

on just constantly. 

But the USDA farm labor piece of 

this thing has gone way too far. And I 

know they just withdrew the rule, not 

because they changed their mind, but 

because there’s a political liability involved. I want to keep turning up that 

political liability so they don’t get any 

more crazy ideas out of that place. 

But to pass a rule that farm youth 

can’t be over 6 feet off the ground, that 

they can’t herd livestock in confinement, that they can’t herd livestock 

from horseback or from the seat of any 

motorized four-wheeler quad, that we 

would call it, that’s all banned specifically by this rule. Right down to the 

point where HSUS must have been in 

the room writing these rules, because 

they also wrote rules that the youth 

cannot be around anything to do with 

livestock that inflicts pain upon the 

livestock. 

Now, there are a number of things 

that happen that are painful to a newborn baby, I might add, Mr. Speaker, as 

well as to animals, that’s for their best 

interest and best good, most of it. 

But if a 15-year-old girl can go get 

her ears pierced without having any 

permission from her parents and presumably that inflicts pain upon those 

earlobes, I’m told it does, but that 

same girl who can opt into her own 

earpiercing cannot watch while a calf 

is being ear-tagged because the nanny 

state has decided that somehow that 

would damage her psyche to be around 

that operation. 

This is nanny state run amok. It’s a 

reach of the Federal Government into 

all of these aspects of our lives that’s 

just so completely intolerable for a 

free people, and we need to push back, 

Mr. Speaker; and so we are pushing 

back on some of this. 

But the one that stands out, I think, 

the most, it emanates from the First 

Lady, Michelle Obama. In the lame 

duck session in 2010, the discredited 

Congress here and, I’ll say, down the 

hallway in the Senate, passed a bill out 

of there. It’s called the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, Mr. Speaker. 

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act 

was written and passed to satisfy the 

wishes of the First Lady who had the 

Let’s Move Initiative to get our youth 

in shape. Now, that on its face is okay, 

and it’s probably pretty good that we 

inspire our youth to get some exercise. 

After all, that is a big part of the problem with overweight youth. 

It’s been well publicized that 30 percent of our youth are overweight. Now, 

I haven’t gone back to question that 

number. It seems to be a number that’s 

accepted. But if it could be a higher 

number, I think we’d probably hear 

that out of the White House. 

Thirty percent of our youth are overweight, and there’s your consensus 

number, true or not. 

Clear back when Bob Gates was the 

Secretary of Defense under Barack 

Obama, Mr. Speaker, he made the 

statement that since 30 percent of our 

youth are overweight, it is a national 

security issue because we can’t recruit 

enough troops to go through basic 

training and be able to keep them 

trained up into shape, to keep our Nation ready for whatever might threaten 

us because youth obesity was prohibiting our national security. 

Now, that causes me to pause, Mr. 

Speaker, when the Secretary of Defense has all of these things to worry 

about, and you’ve got everything from 

missile defense to our ground troops 

and multiple places in the world where 

we have a presence and where we need 

a presence and threats all over the 

globe and the Secretary of Defense is 

making a political statement that 30 

percent of our youth are overweight 

and national security is at stake, so 

therefore we need to do something to 

cut down on the weight of these kids. 

So, I think how is it that we can’t recruit enough people in our military, 

even if there are 30 percent that are 

overweight and the other 70 percent 

don’t fill the ranks enough voluntarily. 

Wouldn’t you go ahead and take somebody that’s 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 or 50 

pounds overweight, put them into basic 

training and just say you didn’t make 

weight so you’re still in basic training 

and we’ll keep you in basic training 

until you do make weight? 

b 2030 

That is not that complicated. How 

can a nation conclude that it’s a national security issue, that we can’t 

solve that problem. 

You take an 18-year-old young man 

or woman, and if they’re 30 percent 

overweight—and maybe that’s 30 

pounds overweight—it doesn’t damage 

their skeletal system or their muscular 

system or their nervous system; it’s 

just a matter of carrying too much 

weight around, and you shrink that 

down and they’re good to go. If that 

wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be so 

many healthy people around here that 


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H6226 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE September 20, 2012 

formerly were obese. They turn themselves around, they get a good diet and 

exercise plan, they get slim—and a lot 

of them stay slim for life—and they 

live healthy and happy thereafter. And 

I’m glad to see that. That’s what we 

should do. But we can’t be a nation 

that throws up our hands and says 

America is in danger because we 

haven’t addressed childhood obesity. 

That is over-hype. 

I sat down with some food retailers 

shortly after Mrs. Obama brought her 

initiative to get people to lose weight 

in this country, and they said to me: 

We’re going to take 1.5 trillion calories 

off the diets of our young people, and 

in doing so our goal is that they will 

lose weight and get back in shape. And 

so how are you going to do that? And 

their answer was: Well, there is this 

Power Bar that kids like, and it’s 150 

calories. We’re going to reduce the calories in it down to 90. And then in the 

single-serving Dorito bags, we’re going 

to take a couple of chips out of there, 

and then that way we’re going to fool 

these kids into eating fewer calories 

because they must have a habit that 

they’re going to only eat one Power 

Bar and they’re only going to eat one 

single-serving bag of Doritos. 

Mr. Speaker, it’s pretty simple: 

These kids aren’t overweight because 

there were too many calories in the 

Power Bar or one or two too many 

chips in the single-serving Dorito bag; 

they’re overweight because they have a 

voracious appetite, and they don’t exercise enough. You cannot fool them by 

giving them a 90-calorie Power Bar; 

they will eat two of them and consume 

not 150 calories but 180 calories. And 

you can’t fool them by taking a couple 

of chips out of the Dorito bag. They’ll 

just open another bag of Doritos. 

That’s the reality of real life. And 

somehow we get this myopic vision out 

of the nanny state that there’s a way 

to trick people into getting slimmer. 

This gets so bad, Mr. Speaker, that in 

marking up the previous farm bill in 

2007, usually they like to bring somebody in to call for more food stamps 

that’s maybe suffering from malnutrition, or at least they’ve been hungry 

part of lives. They couldn’t, apparently, find any witnesses like that any 

longer because the food stamps have 

been pushed out so hard in this country 

that they seem to be ubiquitously 

available. And so they brought in 

Janet Murguia, the president of La 

Raza—that’s the organization ‘‘The 

Race.’’ This was in March of 2007. She 

testified that one of the growing problems of obesity is that even though 

most people know where their next 

meal is coming from, they don’t know 

where all their meals are coming from. 

Therefore, they tend to overeat, and 

when they overeat they become obese. 

So if we would just give them an unlimited amount of food stamps, then 

they wouldn’t be so concerned about 

this food insecurity. They would eat 

less, lose weight, and all would be well 

with the world. 

That is a bizarre thought, Mr. Speaker. I can’t embrace that way of thinking. I didn’t even know how to argue 

against it. It caught me so far off balance that people are overweight because they don’t have enough food 

stamps, so we’ll give them more food 

stamps and they will lose weight. I deal 

with this kind of irrational irrationality here in this Congress constantly. 

It’s no wonder that people call for a 

voice of common sense in this place. 

So, Mr. Speaker, that’s the food 

stamp argument, the nanny state argument. But it takes me to the school 

lunch program. The school lunch program is out of control. It is this 

Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which 

is the First Lady’s bill, that regulates 

the diet of every kid going to school in 

America. I went into lunch at RemsenUnion here this week to sit down with 

them. First I gave them a program on 

the Constitution—they were great, and 

I look forward to going back there, I 

hope. Good, good, young people. 

When I finished up, I said, Now it’s 

lunchtime. I’m going to go eat your 

lunch. And they said, oh, you’re not 

going to really, are you? Sure, I did. I 

sat down. And not picking on their program, it’s rationed by the United 

States Department of Agriculture. 

They did not have the authority granted to them specifically in the Healthy, 

Hunger-Free Kids Act to ration calories to our kids, but that’s exactly 

what they’ve done, Mr. Speaker. 

They’ve reached into and grabbed an 

authority that didn’t exist and decided 

to opt into rationing calories to our 

kids in all of these schools. 

So for the first time in the history of 

this country—we’ve had nutrition 

standards, nutrition minimums; you 

don’t give them less nutrition, you 

don’t give them fewer calories than 

this standard—and that standard has 

been published, and it’s well known 

among our school lunch program. But 

Michelle Obama’s Healthy, HungerFree Kids Act, as interpreted by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, 

sets caps on calories that kids can get 

to eat. 

So, for example, a high school football player, a senior high school, for example, 250-pound lineman—growing, robust, active, working out every day—is 

rationed to 600 calories for breakfast, 

850 calories for lunch. That’s 1,450 calories. Now, if you give them another 

dose of, say, 800 calories for supper, 

you’ll fall far short of the calories he 

needs to maintain his exercise level 

and his weight. 

For me, I need 2,841 calories a day to 

maintain my weight. That’s the formula, and that’s also something in 

practice that I’ve measured and 

charted on a spread sheet; 2,841. If you 

put me on that diet, the ration that the 

Department of Agriculture is giving 

these kids, every 8 days, if I’m constricted to that diet—and that’s granting 850 calories for a third meal of the 

day—I would lose a pound every 8 days. 

I’m past my growth spurt. They exercise a lot more than I do—or at least 

they should. That’s how misguided this 

is. 

Same number of calories for a kindergartner as for a fifth-grader. I believe the minimum number is 550 calories. And so a 30-pound kindergartner—which would be a small one— 

versus a 120-pound fifth grader—which 

would be a large one—get the same 

amount of calories. Generally, a fifthgrader is twice as large as a kindergartner. They get the same amount of 

calories, and it’s capped. 

Another thing that is so bad about 

this, Mr. Speaker, is that the youth 

that come in that have the money can 

go ahead and buy extra food a la carte. 

So they’ll go back, if they’ve got the 

money, and buy an extra hot dog and 

go back and fill themselves up. But 

these kids that are on free and reduced 

lunches don’t have that money in their 

pocket, and they’re sitting there 

watching their better-off friends go 

back for a whole second helping, or the 

second helpings that they like. It is 

stigmatizing these kids that are on free 

and reduced lunch. It should not be. It 

sets up the wrong scenario in our 

schools. 

This Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act 

says this: The USDA has the right ‘‘to 

set nutritional standards for all foods 

regularly sold in schools during the 

school day, including vending machines, the a la carte lunch lines, and 

school stores.’’ 

That’s what the bill says. The Department of Agriculture and Secretary 

Vilsack have decided they’re going to 

cap the calories. It doesn’t give the 

specific authority; they just decided 

they’re going to cap the calories so 

that—now, here’s the formula: 30 percent of kids are overweight by their estimate, so 100 percent of them go on a 

diet. That’s the mentality of the nanny 

state, Mr. Speaker. 

And where does this food come from? 

Agriculture, of course. We have been 

working to push a farm bill through 

this Congress for a long time. About a 

year ago last May, I and my staff and 

a number of others began putting together a bill. As we went out into the 

Ag community and asked them for 

their input on what they’d like to see 

and what changes in the bill, one thing 

that came back that stood out above 

all others is we need a good risk management program. That means crop insurance is the centerpiece of it. I set 

about to hold that together, and we did 

the research and laid the foundation. 

And so far we’ve held that crop insurance, I think, together pretty well, Mr. 

Speaker. But that’s the crop insurance 

piece. 

Many other pieces—the nutrition 

side of this. We’ve gone from 19 million 

people on food stamps to up now to 47 

million people on food stamps. That, 

Mr. Speaker, is a number that creates 

expanded dependency in the country. 

The intention of the President and his 

party. An expanded dependency class 

votes more for them. 


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September 20, 2012 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H6227 

b 2040 

An independency class votes more for 

us guys. So they have pushed food 

stamps out into people. They’ve spent 

millions of dollars advertising food 

stamps so more people sign up on the 

SNAP program; and in doing so, they 

expand the dependency people, those 

that rely on government. That’s been 

part of the mistake. We set about reforming that. 

We have a tattoo parlor with a neon 

light that says we take EBT cards. So, 

food stamp money goes for tattoos. 

We also have a fellow that bailed 

himself out of jail with his EBT card. 

They’re being sold for cash and discounted. 

That’s some of the things that are 

going on. We need to tighten that up, 

and the House Ag Committee tightened 

it up. We tightened it up to reduce 

those dollars going in so that the people that should not be receiving the 

food stamps are less likely to get them, 

and that saved about $16 billion out of 

the duration of this program, Mr. 

Speaker. That’s one of the reforms in 

the farm bill. 

Holding the risk management program together for agriculture and reducing the waste and the fraud and the 

corruption in food stamps was an important thing. That’s what the House 

Ag Committee bill is about, Mr. Speaker, and I want to see it come to the 

floor, the committee product come to 

the floor. I’d like to see it come to the 

floor just under a closed rule. Let’s 

vote it up or down and let’s see where 

it goes. If it fails, it fails. Then we can 

go back to the drawing board. If we fail 

to try, that will be labeled a failure. 

I came to this city this week to make 

that point over and over again, Mr. 

Speaker. We need to move a farm bill 

out of this House of Representatives. 

And I recognize that procedurally, at 

this point, as I stand here tonight, that 

is an impossibility under the rules of 

this House. So the best that we can 

hope for is to bring a farm bill to the 

floor as soon as we come back after the 

election. 

I’ve asked the Speaker to do this. 

I’ve asked the majority to do this. I’m 

working closely in direct cooperation 

with the chairman of the Ag Committee, FRANK LUCAS of Oklahoma, 

who has done a stellar job on bringing 

a good bill out of committee and preparing it for floor action. He was an 

utter maestro in putting that bill together, and the work that was done by 

the chairman and many others, including Ranking Member PETERSON, Democrats and Republicans, resulted in a 

bill coming out of the Ag Committee 

that only had 11 ‘‘no’’ votes, and it was 

a bipartisan support for the bill. The 

opposition was also bipartisan, but it 

was only 11. So whatever the bar was, 

however high it was, we’ve cleared the 

bar. 

We need to bring a bill to the floor. 

We need to provide that kind of stability and predictability to the ag community so that they can plan next 

year’s crops and plan their lives. 

What comes out of this House and 

out of this Congress and is signed by 

the President affects land prices, 

equipment purchases, land sales, farm 

rentals, the whole configuration, a lot 

of it is looking down on this farm bill. 

So let’s get it done. I’m looking for 

that full 100 percent commitment to 

bring the bill up to the floor when we 

come back. We’ve gotten a strong 

statement out of the Speaker that 

that’s what will happen. I’m looking 

for reinforcement on that statement 

before we gavel out tomorrow, Mr. 

Speaker. 

But it’s essentially important to us 

that we know which direction we’re 

going on agriculture. It isn’t so critical, the policy standpoint, between 

now and December 31, but knowing, for 

planning purposes, is valuable. And if 

we get to, say, December 31 without a 

farm bill, then we do have a problem on 

our hands. 

In the meantime, it’s my strongest 

urging that we hear that kind of commitment from the Speaker and the 

other leadership, that we’ll take this 

bill up and take it to the floor. It’s a 

strong message now. I’d like to see it 

become a full commitment before we 

leave this House tomorrow afternoon 

to go back for our elections. 

So, Mr. Speaker, I have vented myself to some degree. I think I’ve helped 

inform this body about the nanny state 

that threatens to subsume this Godgiven American liberty and issued my 

urging that we move a farm bill and 

that we get a commitment to do so 

when we come back in November. 

I appreciate your attention and the 

work that we’ve done here together as 

Democrats and Republicans and how 

we’ve reflected the voice of the American people. After the election, I hope 

we get the kind of help in the Senate 

that we received in the House in 2010. 

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back 

the balance of my time. 

f 

HOUSE BILLS APPROVED BY THE 

PRESIDENT 

The President notified the Clerk of 

the House that on the following dates, 

he had approved and signed bills of the 

following titles: 

June 29, 2012: 

H.R. 6064. An Act to provide an extension 

of Federal-aid highway, highway safety, 

motor carrier safety, transit, and other programs funded out of the Highway Trust Fund 

pending enactment of a multiyear law reauthorizing such programs. 

July 6, 2012: 

H.R. 4348: An Act to authorize funds for 

Federal highways, highway safety programs, 

and transit programs, and for other purposes. 

July 9, 2012: 

H.R. 33. An Act to amend the Securities 

Act of 1933 to specify when certain securities 

issues in connection with church plans are 

treated as exempted securities for purposes 

of that Act. 

H.R. 2297. An Act to promote the development of the Southwest waterfront in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes. 

July 18, 2012: 

H.R. 3902. An Act to amend the District of 

Columbia Home Rule Act to revise the timing of special elections for local office in the 

District of Columbia. 

July 23, 2012: 

H.R. 4155. An Act to direct the head of each 

Federal department and agency to treat relevant military training as sufficient to satisfy training or certification requirements 

for Federal licenses. 

July 26, 2012: 

H.R. 3001. An Act to award a Congressional 

Gold Medal to Raoul Wallenberg, in recognition of his achievements and heroic actions 

during the Holocaust. 

July 30, 2012: 

H.R. 205. An Act to amend the Act titled 

’An Act to authorize the leasing of restricted 

Indian lands for public, religious, educational, recreational, residential, business, 

and other purposes requiring the grant of 

long-term leases’, approved August 9, 1955, to 

provide for Indian tribes to enter into certain leases without prior express approval 

from the Secretary of the Interior, and for 

other purposes. 

August 3, 2012: 

H.R. 2527. An Act to require the Secretary 

of the Treasury to mint coins in recognition 

and celebration of the National Baseball Hall 

of Fame. 

August 6, 2012: 

H.R. 1627. An Act to amend title 38, United 

States Code, to furnish hospital care and 

medical services to veterans who were stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 

while the water was contaminated at Camp 

Lejeune, to improve the provision of housing 

assistance to veterans and their families, 

and for other purposes. 

August 7, 2012: 

H.R. 5872. An Act to require the President 

to provide a report detailing the sequester 

required by the Budget Control Act of 2011 on 

January 2, 2013. 

August 10, 2012: 

H.R. 1369. An Act to designate the facility 

of the United States Postal Service located 

at 1021 Pennsylvania Avenue in Hartshorne, 

Oklahoma, as the ‘‘Warren Lindley Post Office’’. 

H.R. 1560. An Act to amend the Ysleta del 

Sur Pueblo and Alabama and Coushatta Indian Tribes of Texas Restoration Act to 

allow the Yslets. del Sur Pueblo Tribe to determine blood quantum requirement for 

membership in that tribe. 

H.R. 1905. An Act to strengthen Iran sanctions laws for the purpose of compelling Iran 

to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons 

and other threatening activities, and for 

other purposes. 

H.R. 3276. An Act to designate the facility 

of the United States Postal Service located 

at 2810 East Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, 

Florida, as the ‘‘Reverend Abe Brown Post 

Office Building’’. 

H.R. 3412. An Act to designate the facility 

of the United States Postal Service located 

at 1421 Veterans Memorial Drive in Abbeville, Louisiana, as the ‘‘Sergeant Richard 

Franklin Abshire Post Office Building’’. 

H.R. 3501. An Act to designate the facility 

of the United States Postal Service located 

at 125 Kerr Avenue in Rome City, Indiana, as 

the ‘‘SPC Nicholas Scott Hart Post Office’’. 

H.R. 3772. An Act to designate the facility 

of the United States Postal Service located 

at 150 South Union Street in Canton, Mississippi, as the ‘‘First Sergeant Landres 

Cheeks Post Office Building’’. 

H.R. 5986. An Act to amend the African 

Growth and Opportunity Act to extend the 

third-country fabric program and to add 

South Sudan to the list of countries eligible 

for designation under that Act, to make 

technical corrections to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States relating to 

the textile and apparel rules of origin for the 

Dominican Republic-Central America-United 


tjames on DSK6SPTVN1PROD with HOUSE