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Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. I also rise in opposition to this amendment, and I associate myself with the remarks of the gentlelady from South Dakota.

I believe that with the economic challenges that our country has felt, much of which is related to the cost of fuel, this is an amendment that I think undermines our ability to recover and to create jobs.

In our rural community down in Mitchell County, Georgia, we have an ethanol facility there which contributes a tremendous amount to the local economy. It hires people and it is, I think, the example of how we grow our rural economy. In fact, this amendment would stop that kind of job growth. It would not allow this facility to expand and to be prosperous, and I just think that it's the wrong way to go.

When America and the American economy gets sick and gets a cold, the rural economy has pneumonia and it's on life support, and we need to make sure that--we had some 30, 40, 50, 60 individuals in rural Georgia who decided that they wanted to invest their own money in a home grown industry for renewable energy, so that we would be in a position to contribute to our own energy self-sufficiency and we would be able to do it in a way where our local individuals would be able to create jobs and to increase the economy there in our local rural community. It has worked very well except for the fact that they don't have the facilities, don't have the pumps, and we need to make sure that they do.

This amendment I think is pennywise and pound foolish, and I think that we need to go ahead and move ahead to help our country become energy self-sufficient. How do we do that? By making sure that consumers do have access to the blends so that we will not continually have to fight with the Middle East for the cost of fuel. Oil prices really are battering our economy. Energy costs are battering our economy. It's also battering our national security. When you look at how many billions of gallons of fuel are spent for our national security with our military vehicles, our weapons, we need to have alternative energy sources, and I think this amendment undermines that.

I oppose it and I associate myself with all those who oppose this amendment. I think that we need to move forward with energy self-sufficiency, energy independence for our country.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. I couldn't agree more with the gentleman from Arizona when he says that we've got to put everything on the table in order to eliminate this deficit and to put us on a path toward balancing our budget. We've got a fiscal crisis.

But at the same time, we need to make smart choices. We need to establish priorities. We don't need to cut off our feet or cut off our hands. We need to empower ourselves and have the tools that we need. And I think that if we're going to have a strong agricultural community, if we're going to have American farmers be able to produce high quality, safe, economical food for the people of this country and for export, and to be able to compete in the global marketplace, we are going to have to have reasonable and smart farm support.

Our authorizing committee has done a great job. And Members of this body have done a tremendous job in trying to review over the years what we need to do to tighten up and make more efficient our farm support programs. And we've got to do that. And of course they do have to be on the table. But let's be smart. Let's not take a meat ax to it when we need to take a scalpel approach.

An individual or a legal entity must be actively engaged in farming rules that are administered by USDA in order to participate in farm programs. To receive the payments when they are available, individuals or legal entities determined to be actively engaged in farming must prove their average adjusted gross farm and nonfarm income are below the levels that are set by the statute. If an individual is determined to be eligible, the total benefits for all crops are limited to a specific amount as dictated by the statute.

Now, we can't have a cookie-cutter approach to this. Our farmers in the Midwest and other parts of the country other than the Southeast have a different need in terms of farm support and farm support programs. We have a diversity of crops. We have a multitude of crops in our portfolio in the Southeast, from Virginia all the way to Texas. And in order to be able to grow those crops effectively, a producer has to have versatile equipment. For example, if you grow cotton you've got to have a certain kind of equipment for cotton. If you grow corn and grain, you've got to have a different piece of equipment for that. There are three different kinds of equipment. And peanut growers, cotton growers, and grain growers all in the Southeast have to finance those various kinds of equipment.

Now, the 2008 farm law made the most comprehensive and far-reaching reforms of eligibility and limitations on farm programs in 20 years. It substantially reduced the level of the income test that was established in the 2002 farm bill by creating two new tests to determine eligibility. Individuals or entities with a 3-year average adjusted gross nonfarm income exceeding $500,000 are not eligible for any commodity program benefits. Individuals with a 3-year average adjusted gross farm income exceeding $750,000 are ineligible for direct benefits.

While this amount may seem generous, the gross income is calculated before debt servicing and other expenses are met. Since a new cotton harvester can cost upwards of $750,000, and investments in land and crop input such as fuel are escalating, you've still got to take into account the cost of the irrigation system, the labor cost, the rent on the land, the ad valorem taxes, and health insurance for the farmers and for their families. So you've really got a lot of expenses that are not taken into account when this statutory limitation on income is calculated.

It also, in '08, eliminated the three entity rule and replaced it with the direct attribution rule, which provides that each payment is attributed to a specific individual. That reduced the payment, since prior to 2008, individuals could participate in three entities receiving payments.

Congress thoroughly debated the level of income tax when we developed the 2008 farm bill so that the tests for farm income and the tests for nonfarm income were appropriate. The tests are administered by USDA, and the documents submitted to USDA by program participants are subject to rigorous review by USDA and IRS.

This is a bad, bad thing, and I suggest that we ought to let the authorizing committee do this in the farm bill and not do it now.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Thank you very much.

I couldn't agree with Mr. Farr more. The one thing that I think we need to understand that this program enhances is our trade deficit. We have been suffering with a global economy over the years. But the one aspect of the American economy in terms of our trade deficit that has kept us afloat has been agricultural exports. And it's programs like the Market Access Program that has allowed us to maintain a trade balance with our global competitors.

So I would think that this is a program that we ought to carefully protect. It's a program that works. And it's what has kept our trade deficit at the level that it is. If we should take this away, we can look to have more products from China, fewer of our exports going overseas, and fewer of the smaller companies that benefit from this carve-out, being able to utilize the Internet marketing and to sell their products oversees. So I would think that this is, again, penny-wise, pound-foolish, and it should be defeated.

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