Improving the FARRM Bill

Floor Speech

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the House is in the process this week of dealing with the most important bill that almost no one has paid any attention to. I'm talking about the FARRM Bill. It goes far beyond dealing with needs of rural and small town America.

It's going to involve, with all likelihood, given the way the past farm bills have exceeded their budget estimates, it's very likely to be over $1 trillion.

The FARRM Bill is actually getting better, slowly but surely, but it has a long way to go to get the most value out of this bill for America's farmers and ranchers, for the people who eat and for protection of the environment.

Mr. Speaker, this week I will be offering some amendments that I hope will be made in order that will try and coax more value out of this process. The first and foremost, based on legislation I've introduced, the Balancing Food, Farm, and Environment Act, would strengthen the environmental quality incentives program to have stricter payments, so we're not putting too much money into any one project, and would disallow spending for large factory farms, but provide additional support for farmers who want to transition to production techniques that use fewer pesticides or antibiotics and stretch those conservation dollars further.

I also have an amendment that would reform the Conservation Reserve Program to direct more money to conservation enhancement and continuous conservation reserve subprograms to target the most environmentally sensitive areas and reenroll higher priority lands, providing more stability for farmers, better results for the taxpayers, and more flexibility at the State level.

Third, and perhaps most important, an amendment I'm cosponsoring, along with Mr. Chaffetz, would apply reasonable limits for means testing crop insurance. The crop insurance program needs greater scrutiny by Congress. It is an area where the Federal Government provides huge subsidies to insurance companies to sell and service the policies. It pays most of the indemnities when there are losses and generous subsidies to make the premiums cheaper for farmers.

Today, in The New York Times, there was an article that talks about the fraud and waste in the program that, really, we haven't zeroed in. There are clear areas of abuse that need more attention.

My friend Mr. McGovern had an amendment that said before you slash nutrition, at least have the rate of fraud and abuse down to the same level as food stamps. I think that's a good proposal.

The amendment that I have introduced with Mr. Chaffetz, it would put a limit of $750,000, beyond which we would no longer subsidize the crop insurance for the large agribusinesses. It's not that they couldn't have crop insurance; it's just the taxpayer will not be on the hook.

It's important for us to start paying attention to the crop insurance program. As we, theoretically, get rid of direct payments, although we still are going to have direct payments for cotton, and I have an amendment on that as well, it's important to look at the overall structure of this program. We don't want to be in a situation where, actually, we're going to end up paying more for crop insurance than the cost of traditional commodity programs proposed by the House and the Senate, and that there are not incentives to be able to use it efficiently and to root out fraud and abuse.

I would strongly urge my colleagues to look at amendments like I have proposed, and others. Look at how the FARRM Bill, the most important environmental nutrition and economic development for small towns and rural America, can be done better.

It's past time to have a farm bill that is environmentally sound, that is cost effective and targets areas that need the help the most. This ought to be an area where we can follow through on the desire to get more value out of tax dollars while we help more people.

I look forward to the debate this week. I hope it is robust, and I do hope that we'll be able to debate the wide range of these issues that would make this FARRM Bill much better.

Source