Schedule

Floor Speech

SCHEDULE -- (Senate - November 14, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. REID. Mr. President, this morning, the Senate will be in a period of morning business for 1 hour, with the time divided and controlled between the two parties--the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final portion.

Following this, the Senate will resume consideration of the farm bill. At 2 p.m. today, Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates will brief Members about the current situations in the Middle East. Both of them will be here in S-407 at 2 p.m.

THE FARM BILL

Mr. President, the farm bill is an important piece of legislation for this country. That is why we do it every 5 years. It is an immense bill and includes many different things dealing with the agriculture of this country. It is similar in its importance to the highway bill that we do every 5 years. The farm bill is one that affects virtually every State.

We hear a lot on this Senate Floor and around the country, as we should, about the fact that we import about 65 percent of all the oil we use in this country, but it is not that way with agricultural products. We do so much in exporting food. It is one of the businesses in America that has a positive balance in trade.

I was happy yesterday morning when I was told by the minority we were going to be able to get a list of amendments and work through this bill. It is true we got a list of amendments, but it is as unreasonable as anything could be unreasonable--270 amendments, and a large number of them nonrelevant. Democrats, after having received these, came up with some amendments, but most of ours are, as well, nonrelevant amendments, meaning we wanted to match the Republicans. We are able to go forward with a handful of amendments, by that I mean five or six amendments, but that is all we need.

To show how unrealistic their list is, one only needs to look at the list. Every Senator has a right to propose amendments. Historically, however, with the farm bill, the average number of nonrelevant amendments per bill? One, in recent years. My research indicates something a little different than I mentioned yesterday. In the last three

bills, no amendments, nonrelevant; two amendments; one amendment. So an average of one nonrelevant amendment per bill.

Here we have amendments they want to offer on this bill dealing with immigration, again, even though we debated for weeks on immigration. This bill is not an immigration bill. And, of course, the old faithful death tax. People come and say, well, farmers have problems, they are losing their family farms. In California, Senator Feinstein heard about that, and so she asked the farm bureau to give her a list of those who had lost their farms because of the estate tax. None. Zero. This is an urban myth or maybe even a rural myth. But, of course, a number of Senators wanted to try that again--Republican Senators.

The issue of the day is the driver's license. A significant number of Senators want to offer amendments dealing with driver's licenses. And fishing loans, the Rio Grande River--I don't know what that is about--the Gulf of Mexico, the death tax, and the AMT. We are going to do AMT before we leave here. We don't need to do it on the farm bill. Fire sprinkler systems, National Finance Center, the Exxon Valdez litigation, land transfer, AMT tax. I can't give you the exact number, but there are at least six or seven amendments on the AMT tax. Is AMT important? Of course, it is. We are going to do AMT before this year ends. Everyone knows that.

In short, the Republicans aren't serious about doing the farm bill. This farm bill is headed down for one reason: the Republicans. They obviously don't want a farm bill. If we went along with this list, it would make it impossible to conduct a fair and reasonable debate--impossible.

So what I am going to do this afternoon is file cloture on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment, a bipartisan amendment, the one that is pending, and then on the bill. That will make a determination. All these organizations that say this farm bill is important--and I have had many of them write letters and contact me and say this is so important, we need to do this, the last farm bill is not as good as this one, it is a great farm bill--we will find out if the Republicans are going to kill this bill. It appears they are going to. They are not serious about passing a farm bill this year. If they come up with a list of amendments we can deal with, I am happy to do that. But I am not going to do this. It is not good for the Senate and it is not good for the country.

I repeat: The average number of nonrelevant amendments on farm bills: One per bill. We have here enough nonrelevant amendments to fill a little notebook. So that is where we are. It is unfortunate. The committee has worked very hard. They passed the bill out of the committee by voice vote. All Senators obviously agreed this was a good bill. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, the ranking member, and TOM HARKIN, the chairman of the committee, think it is a good bill--Democrat and Republican.

We are in the situation where Republicans are saying: Well, I want to offer my amendment on fire systems, the Exxon Valdez litigation, the AMT, and, of course, the old faithful, immigration. So that is where we are. It is unfortunate that is where we are, but this bill is headed down.

I indicated what I am going to do. Unless the Republicans come up with something more realistic, this bill is going to have cloture filed on Dorgan-Grassley, cloture on the bill, and that is where we will be on the bill this afternoon sometime.

END

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