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Today in the full Appropriations Committee markup of the Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration funding bill for Fiscal Year 2026, Senior Appropriator Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) called out the Trump Administration’s hypocrisy, touting a “Make America Healthy Again” agenda while stripping access to healthy food away from families and children. A summary of the bill is available here.

“14,000 families use WIC in my state. That's a lot in a state of only 1.3 million people. This is a way to make sure we have healthier fruits and vegetables and better health outcomes for young children in their diet,” Pingree said. “You know, this is the administration of ‘MAHA’—Make America Healthy Again. And how do we expect to make America healthy if we are not going to make sure that people get that healthy food in their diet?”

Watch Pingree’s opening remarks here; Watch the full markup here.

In her opening remarks, Pingree also railed against the bill’s attacks on supporting farmers impacted by the effects of climate change, dispelling the notion that these programs are “woke” or part of a “liberal climate change agenda.” 

“When we talk about conservation funds and the cuts there, or the ‘climate change agenda’ as if it's some woke thing – who deserves more attention than our farmers who are dealing with this extreme weather? That is our responsibility and these programs that help them to access no till agriculture or cover crops or more irrigation. These are the very things that we should be funding now,” Pingree said. “Our farmers deserve our attention. This is not woke. This is not some crazy liberal climate change agenda. This is what's really going on with our weather right now. And we are derelict in our duty. We are not holding up our responsibility to farmers.”

A transcript of Pingree’s full remarks is copied below:

I'm disappointed that I can't support this bill. The Agriculture Appropriations Committee in this bill is my second favorite subcommittee after, of course, the work I do with Mr. Simpson on the Interior bill. And I am sorry that this bill isn't a better piece of work from this committee.

One of the things I love about this bill is that we're really focusing on farmers and what people eat, and we need to ask ourselves, as we look at this bill in its entirety, what are we doing to help our farmers stay on their farms, to access capital, to be sure that they can purchase or own a farm, to increase their family income, to make ends meet, and to keep their farms in business during these ever challenging times?

The reason you'll hear a lot today, and we've already heard some about the cuts to the local food purchase assistance program and the local foods and schools programs, and I'm going to talk about it today in much more detail in an amendment, is because it is such a good example of a program that was designed to give farmers contracts to supply food to local schools, food banks, and other entities in our home states.

We spend so much time talking about how to get more healthy foods in our diets, how to make sure we give farmers the contracts they need, and for the farmers in Maine who lost those contracts when this was ridiculously cut, it was part of making ends meet. It was part of their winter income. As part of what they had planned for everything from yogurt to carrots to apples to a whole variety of other things.

And that was true in states across the country. And we've ended that program and that is an example of something that we should be doing the reverse of in this program. There are other cuts to making sure people get healthy food in their diet, the cuts to WIC - fruits and vegetables that we will talk about more in an amendment today, 14,000 families use WIC in my state.

That's a lot in a state of only 1.3 million people. And again, this is a way to make sure we have healthier fruits and vegetables, better health outcomes for young children in their diet. You know, this is the administration of “MAHA” - Make America Healthy Again. And how do we expect to make America healthy if we are not going to make sure that people get that healthy food in their diet?

Housing is another cut in this bill. Housing is the number 1 or 2 issue for so many people in my state. The cost of housing, the challenges with finding affordable housing. And we are making cuts there, $46 million of cuts overall to rural development staffing. I have a constituent in my district, Hillary, who is disabled in her 40s.

She was getting a home through an RD loan. It's her only viable pathway to home ownership. She's taken all the steps she needs to: completed her homebuyer education, submitted her paperwork on time ... But after years of delays, because of funding cuts, she's finally where she should be, but there is no staff to process her loan to answer the phone.

Her calls and emails are going unanswered, and there's a question about whether or not she will get to the finish line. Those staffing cuts are throughout our districts, in our local offices, and we talk about how to make sure our farmers are able and eligible to get the funding, whether it is, through a conservation program, through a loan.

But so many of our offices now are understaffed and underfunded, and I know we will be talking more about that. We'll talk about the cuts. The Dairy Farmers Innovation program. In my state, dairy farmers are under assault, just barely making it. Now, so many of the amendments we'll have today, we're going to hear this reply: “Oh, that's just woke Democratic thinking” or “that's climate change agenda” or that's “pre-pandemic money or pandemic money that we don't need anymore.”

But you know we learned a lot of lessons in the pandemic. We learned that our supply chains were broken, that we should buy more locally. That's why we have these programs. Yet we're having them cut out from under us. When we talk about conservation funds and the cuts there, or the “climate change agenda” as if it's some woke thing – who deserves more attention than our farmers who are dealing with this extreme weather? That is our responsibility and these programs that help them to access no till agriculture or cover crops or more irrigation or a whole variety of other things are the very things that we should be funding now.

Our farmers deserve our attention. This is not woke. This is not some crazy liberal climate change agenda. This is what's really going on with our weather right now. And we are derelict in our duty. We are not holding up our responsibility to farmers and to making sure our constituents get that healthy food. We'll have many opportunities to talk about this today.

I'm sorry, I have to oppose this bill.

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