The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“FISCAL YEAR 1998 AGRICULTURE APPROPRATIONS BILL” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1514-E1516 on July 24, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
FISCAL YEAR 1998 AGRICULTURE APPROPRATIONS BILL
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HON. ELIZABETH FURSE
of oregon
in the house of representatives
Thursday, July 24, 1997
Ms. FURSE. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I was blocked from offering an amendment to the Agriculture appropriations bill by an unfair gag rule. This rule was written by the Republican leadership midway through debate on the Agriculture appropriations bill to change the rules for debate from an open amending process to a closed, undemocratic process.
Although we were told that no preprinting of amendments was required, the rule arbitrarily barred any amendments that weren't preprinted 2 days prior. This meant that by the time Members first heard of the new rule, it was already too late for them to meet its new restrictions. Unless, of course, you were one of the three chosen Republicans that were inexplicably grandfathered in as exceptions to the preprinting deadline.
The Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee knew that I intended to offer this amendment. I had sent out four dear colleagues letters, including one bipartisan letter signed by six other Members. Nonetheless, I was unjustly muzzled; my opportunity to have a debate on an important policy issue was held hostage to a partisan power play.
The following paragraphs describe in detail the animal damage control amendment that I would have offered had I not been silenced by an unjust rule of the majority party.
The goal of my amendment is to reduce the Federal subsidy for a practice that many Americans believe is economically unfair, ineffective as a livestock protection method, unnecessary, inhumane, a waste of money, and harmful to the environment.
My amendment requires that those who benefit from the livestock protection services of the Animal Damage Control Program in the West pay for those services. This amendment is supported by more than 80 taxpayer and conservation organizations from across the country, including Taxpayers for Common Sense, the National Wildlife Federation, Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Green Scissors budget-cutting coalition.
My amendment is designed to eliminate the excessive, systematic, taxpayer-subsidized annual killing of hundreds of thousands of coyotes and other animals in the name of western livestock protection. Specifically, my amendment limits ADC funding for livestock protection efforts in the Western United States to $1.9 million. This amount is enough to provide $100,000 to each of the 19 States in ADC's Western region, which will allow them to continue predator control programs focusing on rancher education and nonlethal control techniques like guard dogs, shepherds, and the like.
By limiting expenditures for livestock protection to $1.9 million, we provide the American taxpayers with a savings of $11.3 million. I want to stress that this still leaves a total of $16.6 million in the ADC budget. I repeat, this amendment will not eliminate the Animal Damage Control Program, and will not affect ADC's other activities. The only portion of the ADC budget my amendment would touch is moneys for livestock protection in the Western United States. And I take a moderate approach. I do not cut the entire subsidy for these activities as many have advocated. My amendment would still provide Federal funding for each State to have a predator control program.
Let me take a moment to mention what this amendment would not do. This amendment would not take any of ADC's money away from measures to protect public health or safety. This includes ADC activities to prevent birds from causing problems at our Nation's airports or to prevent the spread of rabies. Nor would this amendment touch any ADC activities in the Eastern United States.
The ADC has seven categories of resources they protect: aquaculture, livestock, forest and range, crops, human health and safety, property and natural resources--which includes endangered species. Let me stress again that this amendment deals only with the livestock protection category, and only in the West.
Two ADC programs that protect endangered species warrant specific mention, if only to note that they will not be cut by this amendment. First, ADC plays an important role in wolf recovery by ensuring that problem wolves that prey upon livestock are immediately controlled. Almost all of ADC's wolf control activity takes place in Minnesota, which is in their Eastern region and therefore not affected by our amendment. What little wolf control activity that occurs in the Western region can easily be funded out of ADC's budget for threatened and endangered species, which is also untouched by my amendment. Second, ADC also plays an important role in preventing the brown tree snake from being introduced into Hawaii. I support the work ADC is doing on this issue and, again, would like to stress that my amendment does not reduce funds for this purpose.
This amendment focuses on the West for several reasons. First, 97 percent of ADC's livestock protection budget is spent in the West. Second, the objectionable and excessive mass-killing of coyotes and other predators takes place mostly in the Western States. Third, that region serves a livestock industry that is over-subsidized to the detriment of wildlife and other public land uses, such as outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing. Fishing is harmed because the run-off from intense livestock grazing near streams reduces fish populations available for commercial and sport fishing. And, of course, subsidized coyote control may induce ranchers to increase their herds beyond environmentally sustainable levels. Fourth and finally, this ADC subsidy is unfair to the majority of livestock producers around the country, who do not benefit from this subsidy, even though their tax dollars help pay for it. This represents an unfair competitive disadvantage.
Let me take a moment to talk about the ADC program and what it does. Each year, ADC kills more than a hundred thousand coyotes, mountain lions, bears, and other predators. Thousands more are accidentally killed. In fact, between 1990 and 1994, ADC killed 7.8 million critters. A number of techniques are used, including leghold steel jaw traps--the method chosen for this ill-fated bobcat in the photo next to me, who died a slow painful death, aerial gunning, field hunting with dogs, snares, denning--which means gassing the mother and pups in their dens, and M-44s--a baited device that ejects cyanide poison into the animal's mouth. One frequent ADC technique is the preventative shooting of coyotes from aircraft to kill as many coyotes as possible before livestock is moved to a new range area, even though they haven't actually harmed any livestock. This practice is comparable to a dentist pulling out all of a patient's teeth as a way to prevent cavities.
In fact, we often see that the amount of wildlife killed by ADC bears little relation to the actual damage inflicted. In 1990, for example, ADC personnel in New Mexico spent more than 80 staff days killing 55 animals--including 22 non-target animals such as kit fox, deer, porcupines and badgers--in response to a single lamb killed by a coyote--a loss of only $83. This is not a wise use of taxdollars.
I would also point out that the ADC's predator control program is of very questionable effectiveness. Between 1983 and 1993, Federal appropriations to ADC increased 71 percent and the number of coyotes killed increased 30 percent--but the number of livestock losses to predators did not decline.
In addition, other factors such as weather, medical problems, poisoning and theft account for the majority of losses of both sheep, 60 percent, and cattle, 97 percent--not predators. Less than 3 percent of all cattle losses nationwide are the result of predation. Our money would be better spent on animal research on how to reduce these losses than on killing coyotes.
The finances of the program are equally questionable. The private ranching interests that benefit from this program contribute only 14 percent of the costs of the program, despite the fact that the Department of Agriculture is authorized to collect fees for ADC services. In every Western State in fiscal year 1995, ADC spent more money controlling predators than the value of the livestock allegedly lost to predators by ADC beneficiaries.
To add insult to injury, this program uses tax dollars to benefit some very wealthy ranchers who can more easily afford ADC's predator control services than the American taxpayers. I bring to your attention the front page story of the New York Post from March which highlights how ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson, who makes $3 million annually, benefits from ADC. Sam's sheep ranch received 412 visits from ADC officers between 1991-1996, during which time they killed 74 coyotes and 3 bobcats. This is not an appropriate use of your constituents' tax dollars.
For years, official ADC policy has required ADC employees to try nonlethal methods of predator control before resorting to killing animals. Congress in fiscal year 1994 and fiscal year 1995 also directed that ``non-lethal methods of control should be the practice of choice'' for ADC personnel. Nonetheless, a 1995 GAO report found that ADC personnel still ``used lethal methods in essentially all instances to control livestock predators.'' In essence, ADC is completely ignoring established congressional guidance, as well as their own internal directives.
Many cost effective, nonlethal control methods exist, such as the use of guard dogs and shepherds, confinement of sheep during the vulnerable lambing period, pasture rotation, removal of carcasses that attract predators, fencing and electronic guards, to name a few. The State of Kansas, which has spent less than $75,000 a year on its predator control program for the past 27 years, relies heavily on nonlethal techniques. In fact, Kansas has 20 times fewer reported predator problems than the State of Oklahoma, a State of comparable size and agriculture production which spends $1.3 million on predator control. We could learn a lesson or two from Kansas on this issue.
So, let me reiterate. My amendment would save American taxpayers
$11.3 million. It does this by reducing funds for the killing of predators to protect private livestock operators in the Western United States. My amendment still leaves more than $16 million for other ADC activities and does not touch funding for the protection of human health and safety or endangered species. It does not impact moneys to clear birds from airport runways, to remove beavers or groundhogs that cause flooding, to control mountain lions that attack joggers or to prevent the spread of rabies by raccoons. My amendment does not impact any ADC activities in the Eastern United States at all.
While we struggle to scrape together moneys to continue the many important programs critical to the American people, the subcommittee has chosen to increase the fiscal year 1998 funding for the ADC subsidy by $1 million over the fiscal year 1997 appropriation and $4.25 million more than the President's budget. In fact, this program is consistently funded at an average of almost $3 million per year more than the administration requests for it. I would argue that our constituents wouldn't view this program as a priority use of their tax dollars.
Let me close by saying that I am a Westerner. I hail from a district that includes rural areas and livestock ranches. Not everyone in my district would be happy to lose their ADC subsidy. But if we're going to be serious about balancing the budget and cutting the fat out of Government spending, then we're going to have to be critical of the subsidies in our own backyards. We can't just cut the pork in our neighbor's district.
I'd like to end my statement by quoting from a letter written to the Governor of New Mexico from a Ph.D. rangeland scientist who just happens to be a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. The Cato Institute, as you know, is a well-respected, fiscally conservative, free market think tank. Karl Hess from Cato writes:
ADC subsidies effectively shoulder what should be part of the costs of operating a business . . . ADC is a gross intervention in the market place. The wonderful feature of America is the freedom of opportunity each of us has to make it on our own merits and to do so in the arena of the free market. I am, as you might surmise, a fan of the free markets, just as I am a great believer in individual freedom. I am certain you are too. Let's make sure that ranchers can defend themselves against predators, but let's not ask taxpayers to pay the bill. It's only fair.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Please join me in reducing the animal damage control subsidy for private livestock owners in the West. Send the signal to ADC that they need to clean up their act. And give the American taxpayers a break.
Vote ``yes'' on the Furse amendment.
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