Statement on Farm Bill
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues in the Democratic leadership to move forward with the 2007 farm bill. Last July, the House of Representatives passed the 2007 farm bill by a vote of 231 to 191. Last December, the Senate followed suit by passing its version of the 2007 farm bill by a vote of 79 to 14. Certainly there are controversial provisions in each bill that must be addressed as we move forward. However, the bipartisan support for these bills is overwhelming. In fact, with 79 votes, this Senate-passed farm bill received more votes than any farm bill in the past 30 years.
Unfortunately, little progress has been made since that time. The respective chairs of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees need to focus on naming conferees and working together to reconcile their differences. Right now, my understanding is both chairs have been meeting with the administration, both saying they are making no headway. It seems to me that ultimately we need to work in a bipartisan manner to resolve the differences between the House and the Senate versions of the farm bill, and that begins by naming conferees to a farm bill conference committee. We only have 6 weeks left to name conferees, reconcile the Senate and House-passed farm bills, and deliver a farm bill that meets the needs of America's producers and can be signed into law by the President.
Additionally, in March, the Congressional Budget Office will issue a new baseline for agricultural programs. On account of high prices and a successful agricultural industry, the CBO will likely predict that few farm payments will be made in the coming years. The result is that Congress will have even fewer dollars to write the new farm bill, which will further magnify our current budgetary issues associated with this farm bill.
Our farmers and ranchers are already making their planting decisions for this spring. Many are wondering what regulatory regime will impact their operations. Will it be the 2007 farm bill--now the 2008 farm bill--which Congress and the Agriculture Committees have been debating for the past 12 months? Will it be the 2002 farm bill which has served our producers well but expires in 45 days or will it be the 1949 and 1938 farm bills, which are the last farm bills with permanent authorizations?
In recent days, some have threatened to let the 2002 farm bill expire and revert to a permanent farm bill policy which was drafted almost 60 years ago. The two laws that would govern most farm programs passed in either 1938 or 1949 are what we refer to as permanent law. If Congress fails to approve new legislation that would set aside those permanent laws, and if Congress also fails to extend the current farm bill, then these two old laws once again become operational.
Now, among other things, permanent legislation would require USDA to establish acreage allotments and marketing quotas for price-supported crops and for producers to vote whether to approve quotas. Some agricultural producers actually might benefit from the permanent farm bill, while other producers in our conservation programs would dramatically suffer. If you are a wheat grower, the loan rate for wheat would be $8.32. That is something a lot of wheat growers would probably like to see. Corn loan rates would be $4.12, and, of course, there would be no countercyclical or direct payments that we have in the farm bill that we are operating under today, and no support program for soybeans under the permanent farm law we would revert to--the 1938-1949 laws I referred to--if, in fact, we don't take action to either extend the current farm bill or get the new one passed.
Milk purchases by the Commodity Credit Corporation would be established at $28.20 per hundredweight, far
more expensive than provisions in the 2002 and 2007 farm bills. Most conservation programs would also expire on March 15 of this year, 2008, including the CRP. If conservation programs expire, no new acres could be signed up by producers.
I call on the leadership--the Democrat leaders are the ones who get this process rolling by naming conferees and allowing the process to move forward, but I think that both sides, frankly, need to put aside any bickering and fingerpointing that is going on and move forward with a farm bill process that will enable us to get a bill, a signable bill on the President's desk before March 15 when the current farm bill expires.
Moving forward on the farm bill debate requires a few critical steps. First, as I said before, there has to be an announcement and naming of farm bill conferees, and that should happen immediately. Conferees need to begin meeting to iron out policy differences between both bills and to come to an agreement on funding. As the conferees do that, and the committee works, then they can negotiate in good faith with USDA in an attempt to reach an agreement on a bill the President could sign. Congress then could pass the bill, get a conference report, move it through the House, move it through the Senate, and get it on to the President for his consideration.
Our agricultural producers, our conservation organizations, our school nutrition groups, our renewable energy sector are all waiting patiently for Congress to work its will with this farm bill. The time for action is now. We simply cannot afford further delay.
Probably the most frequently asked question when I am back in my home State of South Dakota as I travel around the State is: When are we going to get a farm bill? Are we making any headway on the farm bill? When is the conference going to meet on the farm bill? Agricultural organizations that come here to Washington to visit pose that same question, because they have every reason to believe that based on the action that was taken by the House and the Senate last year, this conference committee process would be underway and we would be well on the way to getting a new farm bill enacted. We can't afford to wait any longer. We have farmers and ranchers who are depending upon us, who are relying on us to make good decisions and good judgments and to get a bill passed that will serve the purposes of promoting agriculture, making us globally competitive, and in the years ahead.
I simply urge my colleagues in the leadership--and again, my assumption at this point is, of course, that the reason we haven't gotten conferees named is for some reason the leadership--the Democrat leader, perhaps--doesn't want to name conferees. I think the same thing is happening on the House side. My understanding is House conferees have not been named either. This process cannot move forward until that happens.
Now, I am told too that there is a belief that we have to get this worked out with the White House or the administration before conferees can begin to meet. That is simply, to me, the reverse of how this ought to work. Chronologically, Congress has to act before we can put a bill on the President's desk for his consideration and ultimately his signature or veto. So Congress has to do its work first before the administration can do its.
I have some concerns, based upon comments that have been made by the administration, about their intentions with regard to the farm bill. There have been veto threats hanging over this bill. I think that would be a big mistake. I will convey that in no uncertain terms, and have, to members of the administration. The administration is raising a couple of issues about how the bill is paid for. They don't like the way the bill was paid for in the House, which included a tax increase. I accept that. I think that would create big problems here in the Senate as well. But the financing mechanisms that were used by the Senate, many of them are financing mechanisms that had been proposed by the administration in previous budgets submitted to Congress. So it seems to me at least we can work through that issue. They would like to see additional reforms in the area of payment limits. Until we get the conferees together and start meeting and working out these differences, none of this is going to happen.
To get this process jump started, we need to have conferees announced and named and get the process moving forward again with an eye toward a March 15 deadline that if we don't meet, we are going to put our producers in a very precarious position relative to their decisions they have to make about this new planting year and, furthermore, jeopardize a lot of programs that are in this farm program that are so good, not just for agriculture but for the rural economy and arguably for our national economy.
The conservation title in this farm bill includes programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program, the Wetland Reserves Program, the Grasslands Reserve Program, the EQIP program. Some of the best environmental policy that we do as a Congress is found in the farm bill. If we don't take action by March 15, that conservation title would expire and no producers could be enrolling in those programs.
The energy title in the farm bill is a tremendous policy with regard to promoting advanced biofuels, the next generation of biofuels. We have had great success in agriculture with corn-based ethanol.
It has been a wonderful story, a remarkable story, frankly, of what our producers can do. We are already at about 7 billion gallons of ethanol. In my State of South Dakota alone by the end of this year, we will be producing 1 billion gallons. The two largest ethanol producers in the country are headquartered in South Dakota.
We have taken the policies that were put in place in the 2005 farm bill--the renewable fuel standard and other incentives--and used them to grow an industry that not only is expanding the economic base in rural areas, but it is accomplishing a major policy objective that I think we all share, and that is reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.
All those energy provisions in this new farm bill which provide financial, economic incentives for the development, commercialization, and research into cellulosic ethanol will all be lost if we cannot get a new farm bill enacted, and that would be a tremendous loss not only, again, for agricultural areas of this country that can benefit economically from the production of renewable energy, but it would be a tremendous loss as well to our Nation as we strive to get less dependent on foreign energy and become energy independent.
For all those reasons, this bill needs to move forward and needs to move forward now, but it starts simply with the naming of conferees. As I look at the calendar, we are already almost to the end of January. We will have a break over President's Day in February. Pretty soon March will be here. March 15 is the deadline. Typically, when you have a bill that is 1,000 pages long, such as the Senate-passed farm bill, it has to be reconciled with the House bill. Even though there are many similarities, there are differences between the two bills that will have to be worked out. As a consequence, it is going to take a certain amount of time for the conferees to sit down and reconcile and iron out those differences. Then, of course, the conference report has to go back to the House and Senate for final approval and adopted by the House and Senate, and then we have to get it down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue for consideration by the President, hopefully a signature on that bill.
We are talking about 6 weeks for all that to happen. That would be a record in terms of congressional time when it comes to processing, deliberating, and acting on legislation, but it cannot get started until conferees are named and both House and Senate conferees agree to sit down and schedule some meetings so we can move forward with this process.
I am very concerned about this situation. As I said, I don't think there is a day that goes by when I am back in my State of South Dakota--and it doesn't matter where I am in my State--that I am not running into somebody who is impacted by the farm bill. In many cases, it is producers, farmers, and ranchers, and they are very anxious because they are probably most directly dependent on the policies we put in place in the farm bill. The conservation community, those interested in wildlife habitats--Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, groups such as that. We have an extraordinary program in South Dakota that has benefited the economy enormously by creating recreational opportunities, hunting opportunities, and it all comes back to having the right kind of habitat and that comes back to conservation policy that is in place in this farm bill.
As I said, anybody who is connected to the renewable energy industry, the nutrition programs, this farm bill has a very broad reach in terms of who it impacts. It is not just about farmers and ranchers, it is about renewable energy, it is about conservation programs, it is about nutrition programs.
As a consequence, the ramifications of our lack of action are very far reaching. I am very hopeful this will happen and happen soon. But I wanted to come down here this evening and convey to my colleagues in the Senate and to the leaders the importance of this happening and happening in a very short order.
I again suggest the leadership appoint conferees and the conferees begin to meet and let's get this train moving forward.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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