Date: 1989-06-07
Speaker: DE LA GARZA (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for yielding. Mr. Speaker. I also wish to address the need for a new Federal policy for rural development. Rural America has not fared well during the past 8 years. In fact. the past 8 years have had a devastating effect on the economic and social structure of ruial America. So much so. Mr. Speaker. that many rural communities are in danger of becoming Americas 20th century ghost towns. Let me offer. by way of background. some statistics that demonstrate the crisis that is affecting rural America. First of all. 25 percent of all Americans still reside in rural areas. There are roughly 55 million men. women. and children who make their homes in the small towns and farms and ranches of our Nation. But its not necessarily the ideal life you may picture in your mind. Americans residing in rual areas face higher rates of unemployment. poverty. malnutrition. and are often less welleducated than their fellow Americans in the Nations cites and suburbs. For example. more than 1.000 rural counties had annual unemployment rates of 9 percent or higher in 1986. At present. the national rate is 5 percent. Since the beginning of this decade. urban job opportunities grew at a rate of 13 percent compared to only 4 percent for rural areas. A disportionate share of the rural population has been poor throughout the century. In 1985. the poverty rate of the nonmetropolitan population was 18 percent compared with 13 percent for metro residents. As many as 21 percent of the residents of the Southern States may be living in poverty. Ironically. nutrition problems In rural America are significant. Our rural population has higher rates of clinical symptoms of malnutrition. infant mortality and infants born at dangerously low weight than the Nation as a whole. According to the 1980 census. 59 percent of the rural poor. 25 years of age or older. had completed high school compared to 65 percent of the central city poor. And only 11.2 percent of the rural poor had completed college compared to 18 percent of the central city poor. respectively. The farm crisis of the early 1980s was like an earthquake which severely shook the economic foundation of many rural communities. On top of that there have been year after year of budget cuts in the Federal programs designed to aid rural residents and to encourage rural development. But you dont have to believe the statistics to understand the critical conditions affecting rural America. You can see the consequences when you visit almost any small rural town in practically any part of the country. Main Street is dead. Roads. bridges. and public services are falling apart because of a shrinking tax base. Poverty and malnutrition are growing problems. And young people and young families are moving to the cities for Jobs because they have given up hope that there will ever be a turnaround. While the farm programs authorized by the 1985 farm bill have helped to improve the income of many farmers. some agricultural communities have still not benefited. The drought of 1988. which has lingered into 1989 in some areas. has only increased the misery for many rural communities. All of us here today agree the time has come for a renewed emphasis by Government and the private sector in fostering economic development throughout rural America. While much of agriculture is finally on the road to recovery. we realize that a healthy farm economy does not by itself guarantee a prosperous rural America. I believe we all agree that there is a great value and a pressing national need to preserve. and enhance the health and vigor of rural society. The question is how do we do it. How do we keep rural America from losing another million people? How can we best help the 18 percent of rural Americans who live below the poverty line? What do we do to improve health care in rural areas? How can wethe greatest foodproducing Nation the world has ever seenprevent children from going hungry right in the heart of farm country? What can we doperhaps through job counseling and training or through small grants or loansto help people who decide to leave farming and pursue other lines of employment? Most importantly. how can we help those who are distressed by their own plight to see beyond their immediate problems and realize the potential that exists in their own lives and their communities? How can we target the commercialization of promising new industrial uses of crops to rural communities? What creative ways can we develop to use our natural resources. such as public and private forests. to take advantage of recreational and resource demands? How do we help these communities diversify their local and regional economics? How do we fund the repair of rural Americas infrastructurethose roads. bridges and water and sewer services?. And how do we addess all these equally pressing problems with the limited resources at our disposal? Mr. Speaker. I am heartened by the interest shown by the administration. particularly Agriculture Secretary Yeutter who heads the Presidents Working Group on Rural Development. and our Senate colleagues who are also working on rural economic development legislation. The widespread problems of rural America demand a coordinated effort by Federal. State. and county governments. I am also pleased that the fiscal year 1990 budget resolution includes $300 million in budget authority for rural development programs. This is a positive step toward reinvesting in Americas heartland. Finally. Mr. Speaker. I am pleased that the Subcommittee on Credit. Conservation. and Rural Development of the Iouse Committee on Agriculture began a series of eight hearings yesterday on rural development. This will be followed by field hearings during the month of August. The subcommittees charge is to investigate the condition of rural America. to determine the forces that have led to its current situation. and to identify the means for correcting the problems which rural Americans now face. What all of us recognize is that we need to develop a new Federal policy for rural America. Under the able leadership of the subcommittee chairman. the Honorable GLENN ENGLISH. and with the help of the ranking minority member of the subcommittee. Mr. COL.MAN. I trust that working together we can lay the foundation needed to rebuild rural America. Mr. Speaker. let me commend the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma . the chairman of the subcommittee on the Committee on Agriculture which has jurisdiction over our rural affairs for his initiative. for his dedication. I do not know if the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. ENGLISI has mentioned yet or not that he has begun a series of hearings on this issue which he will have in Washington and out in the country so that we may get input from the people. Mr. Speaker. I hesitate to call this program a rural development program because it is really much more than that. and we do not distinguish it or separate it from urban America and what is happening in urban America because we are concerned and we have worked in the past Congress on legislation for the homeless. We have worked on legislation as far as mass transit. We have worked on legislation which impacts on urban America. This is not rural versus urban. but there are some differences. and I think some of my colleagues have or will mention them. The problem in rural America basically. I regret to say. is numbers. and many times we deal here with numbers. where are the numbers. where are the masses. and we try and garner our resources and ahn them to where the masses are. Mr. Speaker. this is not fair because I was recently visiting in my area which has many rural small towns. and we have had to go a further step. and we have had to go above and beyond the norm to satisfy. not to satisfy. but to try and assist with the problems of rural America. In the large cities. they. the public or private sector companies. came with the telephones. They did not do that in rural America. In the private utilities and the public utilities or private sector utilities they came with power. power and light. They did not do that in rural America. So. Mr. Speaker. we had to go with REA. the Rural Electrification Administration. assisting them to help themselves. not giving them power. but assisting them that they might be able to have that power. They went to the masses. the public sector. where the money could be made. where they had 1.000 houses. when we had maybe 100. So. it costs more to bring in the lines. It costs more for the operation. But yet I was just a while ago speaking to our daughter and the grandchildren. That is the reason why grandparents call their children. to ask about the grandchildren. Well. what is the difference between a father. or a grandfather or a grandmother in an urban city and one out in the rural sector where there are not but about 10 houses? I ask. "Why shouldnt that grandfather have the ability to call his grandchildren who live away from him because there are only 10 houses in that neighborhood 5 miles away from the main powerline?" That should not* be the dividing line. and that is why we had the REA. and that is why we had the rural telephone. Same way with water. I have in the year 1989 in my congressional district areas that still have no water. In many areas they do not have the resources to pay for the water. We are trying to alleviate that problem in some way. but they still have no water. Nineteen eightynine. Mr. Speaker. the 20th century. and people yet with no water. and this is what we are speaking about. This is what my colleague. the gentleman from Oklahoma is going to be looking at. that we need the Infrastructure. In addition we have another problem in that the Jobs are not there. so people leave. Many commute. but they want to live out there. and we with great pride say. "We have the right to live where we want to in this. the greatest country In the world. the greatest democracy in the world with the greate. freedom of any other major nation in the world. but in many instances you cannot avail yourself of that freedom or have that choice." Mr. Speaker. the infrastructure is not there. so what we are trying to do and will try to do is concentrate on how do we keep Jobs. how do we bring jobs. not take away jobs from our friends in the urban areas or in the metropolitan areas. but how we can generate more Jobs so that someone who wants to live out there can where one can still hear the birds. where one can maybe hear a coyote howl. as is possible in south Texas. We should allow them that privilege. Mr. Speaker. I think it is a major responsibility of government. not an intrusion in the private lives of individuals. not government in a socialistic form. but the responsibility of government to provide this. My colleagues remember the phrase. "life. liberty. and the pursuit of happiness." That is what we are talking about. the pursuit of happiness and also that one must have the ability to pursue it where one wants to live. This is an area that we will be looking toward so that we can generate new Jobs. so that we can take. maybe. the commodities in that area and manufacture there. or. if they have produced. do the packing. or the canning. or the processing there. There is in my area now being considered a plant that will be composed of a major manufacturer of apparel. mens apparel. wearing apparel. some cotton producers in the city. and what it will do is that the producers of the cotton will produce the cotton right here in the area around the plant. They will bring the cotton to the gin. and the cotton will be ginned right there. Right next to the gin will be the textile plant. The processed cotton will be made into material in the textile plant. Right next to the textile plant will be the final operation of making in this case maybe mens underwear. But the cotton will come in here. and the final product will come out here. all in the same plant. Mr. Speaker. this is what we are talking about. 200. 300 Jobs for people who want to stay out there in the rural area and not have to go look for a Job some other place. There are many other areas that my colleagues know about: health problems. transportation problems. Who is going to pick up the garbage in rural America? Who is going to pave the road all the way out to the farm. to the ranch? Who is going to provide the repairing of bridges if there are creeks or gullies that must be crossed to go to the farm or to go to the ranch? Mr. Speaker. this is what we will be speaking about. This is what the subcommittee chairman and the subcommittee will go out to rural America looking for. for the input from the people. It will take money. but I wish I had the chart. but my friends already know of the chart that I had made. What does it cost to run the Department of Agriculture? Everything in the Department of Agriculture? Four point three percefit of the total budget. of the trillion dollar budget. If we were to abolish the Department of Agriculture in its entirety. we would reduce it by less than 5 percent. And then another area that I just read from some gentleman in my district wrote a letter to the editor about how old DE tA OARzA Is giving away all this money to the farmers and they are laughing all the way to the bank. like we are thd ones busting the budget. I had our economists on the Agriculture Committee. my friends have heard that and seen that. I said. "Lets make a graph. Put in red the total budget and superimpose in blue what we spend for programs of sup. port for agriculture." "OK." he said. Couple days later he came back and said. "It wont work." "Why wont it work?" I told him. "Just make the graph in red. superimpose in blue what we spend for agriculture support programs." "It wont work. boss." I said. "It has to." He said. "No. look." I said. "Thats what I want. Now put in blue what we spend." He said. "I already did. Its the line at the bottom." I could not even see the line at the bottom. It was 1.13 percent of the tilllion dollar budget goes for that. On the other hand. in the past 8 years my colleagues have worked with me on that and the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee. the gentleman from California . in the past 8 years we have reduced agriculture spending by over $30 billion. We have been responsible. We have done what needed to be done. The only agreement we have with the Budget Committee is. "You give us the numbers and we will provide you the cuts. We will be responsible." We have done them. This year. for the coming fiscal year. we have to do $600 million. We have to reduce by $600 million. We told the Budget Committee. "We will be responsible. We will do that and It will be done. We dont know yet where we are going to get it from. but we are going to do it." So I think that responsibility at least entitles us to some degree of consideration of what we are going to do out there in rural America for development. for industrialization. for the infrastructure. This morning I visited with some ladies from an organization called WIFE. and also with some ladies from AgriBusiness. women. and all those ladies are mothers. grandmothers and sisters of people who live out in the countryside who are farmers. and their plea to us is. "We want to say living out there. Help us so that we can do that." We need to do that. because. oh. 3 years ago I was invited to speak to the FFA. the Future Farmers of America. There were. I do not know. 2.000 youngsters there. In my talk to them I asked rhetorically the question about where we wanted to go in agriculture. These are youngsters 20 years and under. I asked. "Is there a future in American agriculture?" There was a resounding "yes" from the thousands that were there. Mr. Speaker. I just want to echo something apropos to that. These youngsters shouted with enthusiasm. "Yes. there is a future in agriculture. Yes. there is a future in rural AmerIca." There Is another program called BOAC. Building Our American Communities. The youngsters from every State submit proposals or programs that they are working on in the community. I am the national honorary chairman. We have a committee that looks after and scrutinizes the projects and then gives awards. a national award. and winners are selected. Again 3 years ago I sat nex. to one of the winners. He was from the State of Washington. I asked. "What was your project?" He said. "Well. we went out into the countryside. We got some money from industry. We got a little help from the Government and from the State forestor. We went and did a reforestation project outside of- our community and hired about 20 people and reforested some several hundred acres." That was their project. So I asked them. "What kind -of trees did you plant?" Well. he mentioned some kind of pine. I cannot even recollect that at this point. I said. "When can you harvest that?" Mind you. this Is a youngster in high school. These were high school youngsters working on a community project. building our American communities out there In rural America. So I asked them. "When can you harvest these?" He said. "Oh. maybe 50 or 60 years from now." That Is the answer. That Is what we are doing here tonight. That is what the gentleman and his subcommittee are going to be doing and eventually our committee. We are going to make the dream of that youngster come true. We are going to see that that youngster continues to live in rural America. a decent. healthy. economically viable life for him and his family and our assurance and our commitment is that we are going to allow him to see those trees being harvested 50 or 60 years from now. That. Mr. Speaker. is what this discussion and this program and what we will attempt to do is all about. that we guarantee that youngster that 50 or 60 years from now he can see the fruit of his labox from when he was a youngster 15 or 16 years old. We must all work together. Mr. Speaker. toward this goal. This should not be a Democratic or Republican issue. This is a people issue. Peoples lives and future is at stake. Its time we start doing something. With this concern in mind. I intend to recommend to the Speaker and the leadership of this body that the development of a new Federal policy for rural Americaa comprehensive approach that will rebuild and revitalize our Nations rural communitiesbe made a priority of this Congress. I am confident that the House can craft the legislation that is needed to revitalize Americas heartland and bring hope and prosperity back to rural America.