Speech #1050144483

In April 1998. the Agriculture Conference Committee agreed to allocate $816 million (over 5 years) of the funding for the Agricultural Research. Extension and Education Reform Act of 1997. Under the agreement. food stamp benefits would be restored to the elderly and disabled immigrants who were legally in the United States and eligible to receive food stamps before the welfare law was signed in August 1996. It would also restore benefits to children under the age of 18 who were in the country at the time and to certain Hmong refugees. The funding is expected to affect the benefits of about 250.000 legal immigrants in Last night. the Rules Committee reported this rule to eliminate the food stamp provisions of the conference report. By eliminating the bills funding and its restoration of food stamps to legal immigrants would create numerous problems. Striking the food stamp provision would jeopardize the entire bill and kill all the provisions in the bill including agriculture research. crop insurance and rural development. Also. eliminating this provision would strip the bills programs of their funding and would leave $1.2 billion in spending in the conference report. I strongly support the restoration of benefits to legal immigrants. The budget agreement and this proposal would restore fairness back into the treatment of legal immigrants and makes the Federal Government responsible for its commitment to support communities that have become the home for a significant number of noncitizens. Many of these residents are taxpayers who deserve to be protected by the same safety net as others enjoy. I oppose this rule which would not only jeopardize food stamps for legal immigrants. but crop insurance and funding agriculture research as well. The savings in this measure nearly $2 billion is derived from state administrative costs for the management of the food stamp program. the implication that this measure is not the right vehicle for restoration of food stamps for legal immigrants is ironic in that other measures are added without any relationship to the food stamp program however desirable they may be. Certainly food stamp restoration is appropriate and neededvote against this unfair rule.