Senate Republicans on Tuesday complained about the rally atmosphere of a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on the “card check” method for forming labor union. A day later they released a video mash-up to emphasize their point.
The video showed committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, endorsing the applause and cheers of labor officials when they heard points they liked, but he drew the line at hostile vocal reactions to critics of the legislation.
“I don’t want to permit any hissing or booing or foot-stomping or throwing of things like that,” Harkin said. “I mean, there are limits as to what people can express here.”
Weeks after his party’s success in the mid-term election, Democrat Tom Harkin already is talking about his agriculture agenda for the 110th Congress, in which he will serve as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Agriculture Department.
At the top of the Iowan’s list is a review of the 2002 farm law. Harkin complained that “the full promise of that farm bill has not been fulfilled” and vowed to revisit specific areas such as conservation and rural investment.
“The Bush administration and Republican Congress siphoned off billions of dollars that we dedicated to conservation, rural economic development, renewable energy and ag research,” he said. “They shortchanged rural America and reneged on commitments in the farm bill that President Bush signed in 2002, so we have to undo that damage.”
Harkin said the law must be enforced in a way that its preference for biobased fuel products is met, and he called for restoring full funding to the conservation security program, which promotes conservation and improvement of soil, water, air, energy, plant and animal life.
Addressing the Democratic agenda for the next Congress more broadly, Harkin said the party “will promptly pass an increase in the minimum wage” that Republicans have blocked for 10 years. They also will reverse the “reckless budget practices” pursued by the GOP in recent years and will conduct stringent oversight of war in Iraq, he said.
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