FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - November 06, 2007)
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Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota. There has been a lot of discussion about this being a costly bill. It was worthwhile for me to sit here and be reminded again of the nature of this investment, the fact that things we are doing in renewable energy are the future of America. It is not just about taking care of some Minnesota and North Dakota farmers. Every gallon of gasoline we replace with ethanol is less money in the pockets of thugs and tyrants such as Chavez and Ahmadinejad. I thank the Senator from North Dakota. If you recall the last farm bill, there was a lot of discussion about whether the President should veto that. Now we look back and across the board folks are saying that was a good farm bill. That was a bill that in the end cost less. It kept the safety net in place. We moved forward with a new world of opportunities with things such as renewables. So we have this discussion again. I hope we pass this farm bill, and I hope it gets signed.
The farm bill begins by stating its necessity due to the fact that ``the present acute economic emergency being in part the consequence of a severe and increasing disparity between the prices of agricultural and other commodities, which disparity has largely destroyed the purchasing power of farmers for industrial products, has broken down the orderly exchange of commodities, and has seriously impaired the agricultural assets supporting the national credit structure ..... ''
This is not the start of the 2007 farm bill. It is an excerpt from the very first farm bill of 1933. When that farm bill was written in 1933, net farm income was only one-third of what it was 3 years prior. Food went wasted in the field, while Americans went hungry because of depressed commodity prices. There was no safety net. It was such a time of crisis that folks from across my State of Minnesota came together with farmers from the Dakotas, Iowa, and Nebraska to protect each other's homes, farms, livestock, and machinery from being taken through foreclosure.
The Senate Agriculture Committee has proven that like minds from these States still collaborate to save the family farm. Today I come to the floor as part of a bipartisan multiregional coalition not just from the Midwest and upper Midwest but from all across this great Nation. On the Ag Committee, we came together under the leadership of Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Chambliss and my friend from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, to build a stronger food safety net for working families, an ag safety net for farm families. Over the next several days, the U.S. Senate will have the responsibility to pass a farm bill that will ensure Americans can meet the bare requirements of human subsistence.
In today's world, relentlessly focused on the future, it can be difficult to reach back into the past and conceive of a time before food stamps, conservation programs, and a farm safety net. It doesn't seem possible that in this country hunger was widespread, massive clouds of dust roared from State to State, and farmers couldn't make enough money from their crops to even make harvest worthwhile. Yet our past bears witness to these struggles. Since these difficult years, Congress has struggled to perfect the omnibus legislation we call the farm bill.
In 2007, with the bipartisan bill produced by the Senate Agriculture Committee, I believe we move closer yet to our final goal of crafting a smarter, stronger safety net. As the Ag Committee has labored over the last several months to build this bill, I have worked with my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to secure a number of priorities for my State of Minnesota. This bill not only strengthens the farmer safety net but helps meet the food security challenges of America's low-income families, makes a bold commitment to renewable fuels, and boosts investment in renewable fuels and conservation.
As the ranking Republican on the Nutrition Subcommittee, I am proud of this bill's efforts to assist those Americans dealing with food security issues. This bill now provides an additional $5.3 billion in funding for nutrition programs, such as stamps and the emergency food and assistance program, TEFAP. The Food Stamp Program, which assists over 260,000 Minnesotans, will be significantly strengthened. We will stop inflation from creating greater benefit erosion in the Food Stamp Program and encourage savings among low-income families. During the markup, I fought to bring the bill's funding for TEFAP, which provides valuable resources to our food banks and homeless shelters, up to the same levels as the House bill. We have found the funds to meet this need, providing an additional $10 million a year.
If you believe everything you read in the editorial pages, you might conclude that this bill funds farmers at the expense of the poor, but that isn't true. Nutrition spending now makes up over 66 percent of the farm bill, while we have found in the Ag Committee $7.5 billion in savings in the commodity title. These savings come from programs that cost $22 billion less than was expected when the 2002 farm bill was passed. My colleague from North Dakota has laid that out. This is a bill wherein the commodity program baseline is lower than the estimate of the 2002 bill. This is a bill where the percent of dollars that goes to farms as a percentage of Federal spending is substantially lower than in the 2002 farm bill. Meanwhile, we manage to preserve the basic structure of the safety net for our farmers who feed and fuel this Nation.
For years now as I have driven across the great State of Minnesota, I have been hearing from farmers who have told me the 2002 farm bill worked. Families growing various crops told me we needed to make some adjustments. This bill makes needed updates for sugar, barley, wheat, and soybeans, among others. The bill includes a reauthorization of the dairy safety net, including the MILC Program, restoring it to the 45-percent payment rate. The committee included my proposal to create a farm storage loan program that works for today's farmers.
I proudly support the new permanent ag disaster program we now have, thanks to the leadership of Senators BAUCUS and CONRAD, that will lend farmers a helping hand when faced with natural disaster. The faces of thousands of hard-working farmers I have seen over the years come to mind as I consider the importance of the farm bill safety net. I also reflect on the health of my State's entire economy, the survival of small towns on country roads. In Minnesota, the agriculture and food industry is the second largest employer, with two-thirds of all agricultural jobs being off farm in processing, distribution, supply, and service sectors. We rank fifth nationally in farm exports and lead
the Nation in sugar beet and turkey production. All of Minnesota needs a strong safety net for our farmers.
Nationally, the farm safety net is critical to every taxpayer, to every American. First, we all need food. Thanks to our farmers, U.S. consumers spend 10 percent of their income on food, the lowest percentage in the world. For every dollar Americans spend on food, farmers get only 20 cents. Our entire economy benefits. Some folks forget that agriculture employs 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, accounts for roughly 20 percent of the Nation's GDP, and is America's No. 1 export.
Beyond preserving the safety net for rural Americans who work in agriculture, this bill provides significant mandatory funding for key rural development programs to build vibrant rural communities, including $50 million to rehabilitate small rural hospitals, $20 million to protect rural drinking water, and provisions to encourage local ownership of ethanol plants.
To revitalize our rural economy, this includes the rural renaissance legislation I worked hard to pass with my colleague from Arkansas, Senator Pryor, that will provide $400 million in tax credit bonds to finance rural infrastructure projects such as water and wastewater treatment projects.
I have no doubt Minnesota is similar to Colorado. We have small towns that simply don't have the tax base to do the infrastructure they need. This bill will provide some opportunity to assist those small rural communities with infrastructure.
Another key to renewing Minnesota's rural communities has been the production of renewable fuels as our farmers work to reduce dependence on foreign oil. In the Ag Committee, we worked to take the next step in helping power ethanol plants with crop biomass and diversifying our biofuels feedstocks to include cellulosic and sugar. All in all, this bill delivers over $1 billion in additional investment in the energy title. It will also help equip our existing corn ethanol plants with the latest in renewable technologies, with $422 million for competitive grants and loan guarantees. The future is cellulosic. We know that with corn we can do about 15 billion gallons of ethanol. We consume 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year, projected to go up to 180 billion. Cellulosic is the future. This bill provides a pathway to accelerate us reaching that future.
This bill helps farmers transition to the production of biomass crops. We provide over $200 million to help farmers with production, harvesting, transportation, and storage costs. I am hopeful one day we will see a cellulosic ethanol plant in Kittson County, MN. This bill will bring us closer to that reality. Meanwhile, this bill includes a sugar ethanol program which I have long advocated. If Brazil can do it, we can do it. They made a commitment in the early 1970s to ethanol. They do it with sugar. They didn't let up to that commitment when oil prices went down. They stayed the course. As a result today, Brazil is not dependent on foreign oil.
We need to have that same commitment, that same persistence. Sugar should be part of it. That opportunity is in this bill.
Finally, I have been concerned that those living near ethanol plants continue to have an opportunity to invest in these renewable opportunities. I am thankful to the chairman and ranking member for including my local ownership amendment to ensure communities continue to hold more of the value created by these plants in their small towns through ownership. On top of all these investments, this bill still manages to include the single largest investment in conservation this Nation has ever seen. Specifically, the bill increases funding for major programs such as the Wetland Reserve Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program, and the Grassland Reserve Program, as well as protecting 39.2 million acres allotted for the Conservation Reserve Program.
This bill also includes Open Fields, a critical, voluntary program to encourage property owners to allow public access for hunting and fishing. All in all, the bill increases conservation funding by $4.4 billion above the current budget baseline, which will mean increased wildlife habitat, cleaner water, and a healthy environment for all of us and it is paid for.
No bill of this size is going to be perfect. But I believe when the sum of these accomplishments is measured, folks will realize what an achievement this is. Of course, some will continue to criticize. Despite including what I consider to be great advances in farm nutrition, conservation, rural development, and energy policy, coupled with dramatic reforms, there no doubt will be detractors who look at this farm bill and cry that more reform is needed. They will argue that money should not to go factory farms. It should go to nutrition, conservation, and energy instead.
As I have traveled around Minnesota, I don't see factory farms. Instead, I meet family after family, such as the Meyer Family in Nicollet County. They let me know how important the farm safety net is to them. They told me the advent of renewable fuels, what it has meant to them in terms of transforming their farming operation, has had the same impact that electricity had for their grandfather. That is the path to hope and opportunity we are on. That is the path this farm bill fosters. I wholeheartedly agree this farm bill should invest more in nutrition, conservation, and energy. This bill makes remarkable strides in these areas. In fact, nutrition spending will grow to represent two-thirds of the bill's total spending. I also believe we need to reform to prevent nonfarming millionaires from getting farm payments and close loopholes to get around payment limitations. Ted Turner and Scottie Pippen should not get farm subsidies. This bill closes the loophole. It succeeds in doing that by the most aggressive farm payment reforms to date, by lowering the adjusted gross income limit from $2.5 million to $750,000 by 2010, while eliminating the three-entity rule and commodity certificate loopholes. No one wants multimillionaires to be getting farm subsidies. This bill says that doesn't happen.
Again, some critics will say reform is not enough. I urge these folks to talk to Senator Chambliss, talk to my colleague from Arkansas, Senator Lincoln. Ask them how tighter restrictions under the banner of reform will throw a disproportionate burden on their farmers, rice farmers and cotton farmers who have a greater cost of production for cotton and rice than in other regions of the country. Farm bills are about achieving broad bipartisan compromise for the good of the American people. This bill meets that standard and deserves this body's support.
I finish by asking my colleagues to take a look at the frescos that line the corridors of the hall of columns next time they find themselves on the House side. Written near the top of one of the walls, there is a quote by Carl Sandburg that reads:
Whenever a people or an institution forgets its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay.
The Senate must not forget this Nation's struggles on the farm and on the
dinner tables before our farm and nutrition safety nets existed. We cannot afford to forget how far our farm bills have come since 1933. We have come a long way over the last 75 years in building a thriving agricultural economy, responsible conservation policies, and responsive nutrition programs. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this farm bill, which builds on the steady gains agriculture has made and continues the economic prosperity it has fueled.
I yield the floor.
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