Yesterday, Congressman Joe Baca of California, and Congressmen Lloyd Doggett and Al Green of Texas offered an amendment on the floor of the House to Agriculture Appropriations bill. Their amendment essentially would ban Ag Approps from reimbursing a state agency if that agency has moved to increase the percentage of mail, telephone, and on-line applications to more than 20% of total applications unless the state agency can show that civil rights laws (including ADA) will be fully met. They knew it would be pulled down on a point of order, but they wanted to get it in the record.

The clip has almost the entire debate; Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Ranking Member of Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, also briefly spoke. She has previously worked with Mr. Doggett on Accenture issues and is supportive of the issue.

http://www.house.gov/doggett/speeches/052306FoodStampFullDebate.wmv

In addition, here is the text of Mr. Doggett's one-minute speech:

Congressman Lloyd Doggett

May 23, 2006

Baca-Doggett Amendment to FY 2007 Agricultural Appropriations

Mr. Chairman, a massive experiment on poor people in Texas has been a true disaster. Mr. Baca seeks to ensure that all Americans are protected from the same thing happening to them. Apparently there were some people who thought Accenture could do just as good a job of responding to Food Stamp inquiries as it did dodging its fair share of taxes by moving off to Bermuda. They were wrong.

Even our Republican Comptroller, as Mr. Baca has noted, says we have had a storm - a perfect storm - of wasted tax dollars.

Many members of our Texas delegation this very week have written to the Governor saying that we believe assisting families with nutrition and health care is not an expense, it is an investment in our community. We noted that face-to-face assistance by our public employees cannot be substituted with a machine, with turning poor people over to the internet or a phone call in a distant city. Moreover, we concluded that staffed locations should have well-trained eligibility employees. Those are the employees our Governor proposed to dismiss. We need to keep them there and this amendment would help accomplish that.