Remarks as prepared: Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing. Over the course of the 114th Congress, the Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee has held a series of hearings to highlight the success of voluntary conservation by our nation’s farmers, ranchers, and foresters. Today’s discussion, “Healing the Bay the Voluntary Way”, takes a more focused approach to this discussion. The Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the U.S., is an incredibly complex ecosystem that includes important h...
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Remarks as prepared for delivery: The United States has a long and complicated relationship with our neighbor to the south. While our close proximity to Cuba makes the island nation a natural trading partner, the stranglehold the Castro regime has had on Cuba has long prevented normalized relations between our two countries. That stranglehold resulted in the United States imposing an embargo on trade with Cuba that has been in place in various forms for almost 60 years. In 2000, the Trade Sancti...
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Remarks as prepared for delivery: Thank you all for being here today as we consider three straightforward bills. H.R. 470, the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest Land Adjustment Act, transfers Forest Service lands in Northeast Georgia. The transfer will help boost the area’s economy through improving recreational activities on the land. H.R. 5883 amends the Packers and Stockyards Act which was enacted in 1921 to protect buyers and sellers of livestock from unfair, deceptive, and discriminatory...
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Remarks as prepared for delivery: Good morning and welcome to today’s Nutrition Subcommittee hearing. Thank you to everyone for being here and thank you, in particular, to our witnesses for your participation and valuable insights. We are continuing the series of hearings looking at the past, present, and future of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by examining employment and training, or E&T, programs. While we know that a job is the surest way to get out of poverty, it ca...
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Remarks as prepared: Good Morning, and welcome to the Committee’s hearing on Regulation Automated Trading. Over the past three decades, our financial markets have been quietly revolutionized by computers. Sometimes called the “electronification” of markets, computer networks have slowly replaced the traditional trading pits. Electronic markets allow computers to seamlessly input orders, giving rise to trading directed and conducted entirely by computer algorithms. Electronic markets and algorith...
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Remarks as prepared for delivery: Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing. This week we celebrated America’s 240th birthday. As we reflect on the freedoms we enjoy at home, it’s important that we understand the role our military leaders—along with our farmers and ranchers—play in ensuring that we are safe and well fed. Two of the pillars of our country’s national security have long been a strong military and sound agricultural policy. For decades, the United States has invested in transport...
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Remarks as prepared for delivery: I want to welcome our witnesses to today’s hearing and thank them for taking the time to share their insight on how we can enhance program integrity within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This hearing, builds upon the committee’s top-to-bottom review of SNAP and I hope it will provide a greater understanding of efforts being made to ensure SNAP is run at the highest caliber. Americans generally support welfare programs to help those who have falle...
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Remarks as prepared: Thank you all for being here for this hearing exploring Big Data and Agriculture: Innovation in the Air. This is our second hearing in a series to educate Members about the different facets of this new frontier in agriculture. Production agriculture from one hundred years ago is markedly different than it is today. While our farmers are still producing many of the same crops, a plow once pulled by a team of mules is now pulled by a tractor that satellites guide through the f...
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Remarks as prepared for delivery: I want to welcome our witnesses to today’s hearing and thank them for taking the time to share their impressive collaborative experience working to improve the diets and health among families across the country through nutrition education. This hearing, like those before, builds upon the committee’s top-to-bottom review of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, so as the committee concludes our review, we will be positioned to make meaningful im...
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Remarks as prepared: Good morning. Thank you for joining the Commodity Exchanges, Energy, and Credit Subcommittee for our last installment of our three-part hearing series examining the implementation of the derivatives market reforms envisioned by world leaders following the 2008 global financial crisis. Today, we will wrap up the series with a focus on clearing and trade execution requirements. Throughout this series, we’ve reiterated many times that our goal is not an indictment of the reform...
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