BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, this motion to instruct conferees is simple. It would urge the farm bill conferees to not include a new permanent disaster program contained in the Senate-passed farm bill. The Senate-passed farm bill included a new and permanent disaster program which has been estimated to cost an additional $5.1 billion.
First of all, I want to commend the House for not including the disaster title. It is not needed. We end up paying far more than we should in the regular subsidy programs; but to add a permanent disaster title is simply heaping too much on the taxpayers. As I go through some of this, you will see why.
According to the Congressional Research Service, since 1989 Congress has passed 35 appropriations authorizations or farm disaster acts that have added more than $60 billion in supplemental funding to USDA programs with just under 8 percent of that coming in the last 10 years. An analysis by the Environmental Working Group showed the Federal Government provided $26 billion in disaster relief payments between 1985 and 2005. Congress spent more than $8 billion in disaster payments between 2002 and 2006, with an additional $3.4 billion being made available for the 2008 omnibus for disaster payments for losses between 2005 and 2007.
So you see, we have regular subsidy programs that are awfully big, and then we are being asked to add a disaster title on top of that. When we debated the bill in 2002, the 2002 farm bill, the idea was to stop the expensive disaster assistance payments. Former Senator Daschle said at that time: ``We are getting rid of these ad hoc disaster payments approaches. We are actually bringing down the cost of the Federal program.''
So in essence we were basically including permanent disaster relief within the farm program in 2002. Or that is what was said at the time. And now we are being asked again, let's add another disaster title because we simply aren't subsidizing enough.
Representative Lucas of Oklahoma said during that debate: ``On the committee, both Republicans and Democrats worked to find a balanced bill so we would not have to come back to Congress and ask for ad hoc disaster bills year after year. We have found that balance in the manager's amendment.'' Again, that was in 2002.
We were told if we passed the bill in 2002, we wouldn't have to come back again and again for disaster payments. But guess what, we were back the next year and the next year and the next year with disaster payments; and we are being asked again here to include a permanent disaster title. Now believe me, if we do this, next year we will be asked to add disaster payments again and the next year again and again. This is nothing more than an effort to increase the baseline, to increase more subsidies going out to farmers.
Representative Pomeroy said in 2002: ``There is a better way to go than to add ad hoc year-to-year disaster bills that leave the farmer and their lenders and their creditors not knowing where they stand. The better way is to put it in the farm bill, just like this bill does.''
Let me remind you, that bill was passed. We did exactly what these Members said we should do in order to avoid ad hoc disaster payments henceforth. Guess what, we didn't. We have seen those payments again and again. Now we are being asked to include a permanent disaster title, only to see these payments again and again. It is simply too much.
When do we stand up and say enough is enough? The taxpayer is on the hook for too much.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. FLAKE. The gentleman mentioned that having these permanent disaster titles built into the budget would be a good thing so we don't have the ad hoc disaster programs. I agree, it would be. But we've done that. That's how the last firm bill was sold to us; that yes, it's a bit bloated; yes, it's bigger than you'd like, but it's going to include disaster payment so we don't have to do ad hoc stuff anymore. We're going to build it into the budget.
I read several quotes. There are several more. Let me just read one more. Representative Combest of Texas said, ``There is a safety net which is built into the program. I think, to my budget conscious colleagues, of which I am one, this is more of an honest way to deal with this problem than ad hoc disaster bill after disaster bill after disaster bill after disaster bill.''
Now, that sounds just like what we heard. This was in 2002. And we've had many ad hoc disaster bills pass since that time. I guarantee you, if we pass this, with this large disaster bill attached to it, we'll see more disaster bills after this time.
The gentleman mentioned that disaster bills come to fill in the gaps when there are bad crop years. That's the purpose of it. In fact, we subsidize crop disaster insurance to the tune of about $3 billion a year, I believe. We've had many programs, many bills to do that. But it hasn't seemed to work because we keep funding on top of that.
If you look at this chart, this chart will show 2002 through 2006, these were not particularly bad years. In the red you will see the subsidies that were given during this time. In the yellow you'll see disaster payments added on top of the programs. So you see, in good years, in bad, it doesn't matter. We seem to have crop disaster programs and money paid out every time, no matter what.
This next chart is quite telling. Shortly before the 2002 Congressional elections, the Bush administration faced growing pressure from ranchers and politicians in a handful of western States that were hit hard by drought. There was pressure to actually do something to help these ranchers.
The USDA responded with a plan to give ranchers cash payments based on how much livestock they owned. Now, to qualify, a rancher had to be in a county that suffered from a drought and declared a disaster by the Agriculture Secretary in 2001 or 2002. Legislation was approved by Congress to extend the livestock program into January of 2003 as well.
Let me just give you one example of how this works. I'll go to this chart later. But all you have to do is to be in a county where some kind of disaster is declared. The rules were loosened so it didn't even have to be a weather-related disaster. Something else could trigger it as well. And all a farmer had to do is say, or a rancher had to do is say, I am from this county, therefore I deserve payment. Per head livestock payment. And that was paid out.
And you had counties that had no disaster at all, or parts of counties, in Arizona we have large counties, only 15 in the State, so you have parts of counties that perhaps weren't suffering any disaster at all where people were collecting payments.
But what you also had, and this will demonstrate the absurdity of the program we have now and the eligibility rules. In Texas here, on February 1, 2003, we had a very unfortunate incident where the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded over Texas, upon re-entry. It scattered over a certain part of the State. The President declared certain counties in Texas a disaster area in order to have emergency services go and collect the debris.
Because that was a national or, I'm sorry, a disaster declared in certain counties, all ranchers had to do in those counties is claim there's a disaster; I'm going to collect benefits for my livestock. And you had, literally, millions of dollars paid out to ranchers for their livestock because of a disaster, a space shuttle exploding over Texas.
Now, that will give you some idea of the eligibility rules that apply here. This, we make no effort in this legislation, nor have we made any effort in any others to really seriously tighten up these eligibility rules. And that is simply wrong to do this.
We are embarking again, let me remind you, in 2002 we were told, let's include a bigger bill, let's have a bigger bill that will include disaster relief, and then we won't need to come back anymore. We'll include it in the base bill. That's better budgeting.
That's exactly what we're hearing today, the same thing, but with no promise that we'll actually get rid, or that we'll actually cut other programs, go into the commodity programs, shave money here to pay it here. No, we're just increasing the baseline substantially.
And I should note, this is not paid for in the bill. The permanent disaster relief is above the base line. We're having to charge fees somewhere else to pay for this. So it's not in the bill. It's not paid for. It's actually above the baseline.
So let me just urge my colleagues, you know, we have a program here that I think all of us, in our candid moments, realizes is out of control. We have subsidies going here that are well beyond what is required and necessary and right and proper. Yet, we continue to do this simply because it makes for good politics. I would think that we're better than that.
I would think that we can rise up, at least now, as the House did, frankly, and say, we shouldn't have a permanent disaster title. Again, I want to commend the House for doing that. But this is why this motion is to instruct the conferees to go with the House version and not the Senate version.
And I would ask my colleague, I would yield for just a minute, if you would, if we felt that a disaster title was so needed, why wasn't it included in the House bill, and why did we rely on the Senate to have it?
I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman.
Mr. POMEROY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Because I yielded back my time, anticipating you were rising to close, if you would give me leave, I'll have about 2 minutes, 3 minutes of answers to that.
Mr. FLAKE. I will gladly yield.
Mr. POMEROY. I thank my friend.
First, there have been mistakes made in the administration of farm programs. And, for example, the gentleman's illustration about the Texas ranch issue relative to the space shuttle tragedy, that was not under an ad hoc disaster bill, but we believe it was very poor administration of relief under another program called section 32. We would hope that never happens again. Action is taken here to make certain that it doesn't.
The disaster bill precludes losses on livestock. Moreover, they can only go in areas designated by the Secretary as having sustained a disaster loss; at which time, in the legislation, it's specified that the whole farm of the applicant has to suffer a qualifying loss. So no more if you happen to live in an area where somebody else got hit, we got a check for you. That's done, and tightened up considerably under this program.
We think that all of those are good government provisions. We also addressed in the 2002 bill, and expect it to anticipate continuing in this bill, price support protection in the farm bill. So we have not had, since 2002, a disaster bill to respond to collapsed prices in the marketplace. We expect that that would absolutely continue. We've got a provision in the farm bill to respond to that. No ad hoc disaster required for price collapse.
And then the gentleman's question to me, I forgot. I yield back for clarification, and I'll respond directly.
Mr. FLAKE. Well, I'd just like to ask the gentleman. In 2002 didn't we hear exactly what we're hearing today, that if we include a permanent disaster title, that there will be no more need for disaster relief beyond this year?
Mr. POMEROY. Well, I can only speak for the comments the gentleman quoted from my own debate. And what I was so happy about the 2002 bill is we were restoring a safety net for farmers when prices collapsed. During the earlier farm bill, known as Freedom to Farm, that protection had been taken away and we had to resort to ad hoc disaster bills when the prices collapsed. We took care of that in the last firm bill and we have not had a disaster bill on that since.
This disaster bill relates to production loss. And we're always going to have disasters in our country that bedevil some of our farmers relative to disaster dimension losses. We put them in the budget. We specify in tight reform language how the losses would be compensated. And we think it's good budgeting.
Mr. FLAKE. Reclaiming my time, we heard some of these same arguments in 2002, that we had tightened things up, and that we wouldn't have the ability to game the system. Yet I mentioned the shuttle disaster as one of the more egregious examples. There are plenty of others.
For example, after the Katrina disaster, part of the programs that we have allow, if prices drop substantially, that prices can be locked in at a certain price, and then farmers can go sell on the market afterwards. The system was gamed at that point; to the loss, to the tune of a couple of billion dollars. These were imaginary losses. These were not real losses.
Mr. POMEROY. Will the gentleman yield on that?
Mr. FLAKE. Just 15 seconds, if I could.
Mr. POMEROY. We fixed the Katrina issue. That's another provision, not a disaster provision. That's a provision that relates to what's called beneficial interest, and we make adjustments reforms along the lines sought by the White House on that one.
Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I would simply say in response to that, this is what we heard in 2002, that we have fixed these loopholes, that this has tightened up. We won't have to have ad hoc disaster payments. There are several types. I mentioned the number of bills that have been passed to provide this type of disaster relief, whether it was for livestock or crop loss or something else. We just passed a myriad of bills to do that. And every time we hear, We've tightened it up; if you just give us a little higher baseline, if you just increase it a little more, then we promise we won't come back again and again and again. And here we are. We're back doing the same thing again.
I would submit, Madam Speaker, that we simply can't do this any more. We simply can't do this.
Let me go to this chart for a minute.
May I inquire as to the time remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 15 minutes remaining.
Mr. FLAKE. I assure my colleagues I won't take my entire 15 minutes, but let me point out this chart right here.
These are areas that have received disaster payments in 11 of the past 21 years. When you think disaster payments, you think this is something that happens once every decade or once every century or something that is an odd occurrence. It doesn't always occur. Yet here we see, look at these dots here. One, you can tell they're highly concentrated. Certain areas keep going back for more again and again and again. These areas where you see the dots received disaster payments 11 out of the last 21 years. One dot equals one recipient here.
Now 11 out of the past 21 years, if you do the math right, that's better than once every 2 years people are coming back for disaster payments, catastrophic losses of some type or another. So the notion that we're taking care of it all, that we won't have any more catastrophic disasters, I think is blown away by this chart because we see again and again.
Another thing that's quite notable with this chart is you see there is a very political disbursement here. I will point out one place, right here at the top of Arkansas. You will see a smattering of dots where this represents, believe me, millions and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars going to disaster relief. But something funny happens here. Once you cross the State line into Missouri, virtually no dots at all. Very little was received at all.
Now, unless droughts respect State boundaries right along the State line, or a tornado is deterred by a barbed wire fence, then this is political. There is no other way to explain this. You look down here near the panhandle of Florida into Georgia and whatnot, there are a lot, and then as soon as you cross over that State line, virtually nothing.
What this suggests to me, and I'm sure anybody who looks at it in candor would say, There's probably a very active farm service organization there that is applying for these grants and going after that drought relief for whatever it's for.
But you have to concede there is no other way to explain this than to see that this is extremely political. That's how it happens. That's how it happened after 2002 when the White House was under much pressure to provide disaster relief before the election was coming up. It doesn't just happen under Democrat's administrations; it happens under Republicans and everyone. We shouldn't allow this to happen.
Let me just close by saying, again, we heard this in 2002, we're hearing it again. We bought it then. We shouldn't have. Let's not include this $5.1 billion disaster program. I'm hearing that it's down to $3.8. That's maybe a good sign.
Mr. POMEROY. If the gentleman would yield, I think it's the gentleman's motion so he has the right to close.
Mr. FLAKE. I would yield 15 seconds.
Mr. POMEROY. Actually, I'm going to ask unanimous consent to get a couple of minutes of my time back, 2 minutes of my time back, to basically put in perspective some of the points the gentleman has raised; and then you might want to reserve your time so you have the opportunity to close.
Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I will reserve.
Mr. POMEROY. Madam Speaker, I ask for 2 minutes of my time back that I yielded.
Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I will yield 2 minutes to the gentleman.
Mr. POMEROY. Madam Speaker, I will speak under Mr. Flake's time, and thank you for yielding.
The reason I yielded back was because I thought this was about ready to draw to a close. There are a couple of points that I do want to make and believe the record needs to make clear.
First, under the last farm bill, we haven't added billions. We've reduced billions from the baseline for agriculture. Because we stopped the ad hoc disaster response when prices collapsed, we had a provision in the farm bill to respond when prices collapsed. Guess what? Prices did not collapse, and the farm bill did not need to extend itself to help farmers. The market took care of the farmers. That saved, over the last farm bill, $18 billion off of the baseline in commodity payments.
Now, what happens as we try to build the farm bill this year? It means we have $18 billion less to do it. We have come up with a farm bill that has additional spending, every dollar of it paid for without raising taxes.
And so this farm bill is a very tightly constructed, paid-for farm bill in contrast to the last farm bill where $73 billion was added to the baseline, none of it paid for, under the Republican majority that previously ruled this Congress.
The final point I would make is that we are going to have disasters. They will threaten the very continuation of family farms across this country. It depends who happens to be afflicted with the disaster at a certain point in time. The option before this Congress is we're either going to prefund, pay for, and budget a disaster response anticipating these losses, or we're going to continue to rely on ad hoc, off-the-budget responses, which we believe is a less responsible way to proceed.
I thank the gentleman for yielding and allowing me to make these rebuttal points.
Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I would yield 15 seconds. The question I had asked before of the gentleman is why didn't the House include the disaster.
Mr. POMEROY. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Essentially, we didn't have the funding in place to support a paid-for disaster bill. Later, negotiations between House and Senate negotiators, and I have been right in the middle of it, found ways to fund the bill, and at that point in time, the disaster title came back in.
Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
I should note, as I did before, this is not below the baseline. There is only room because we're going well above the baseline. We're actually charging fees or doing some other things to free up offset money to actually pay for the disaster.
Mr. POMEROY. If I just can respond briefly.
Mr. FLAKE. Sure.
Mr. POMEROY. Madam Speaker, the ad hoc disaster programs that we have passed did not figure into the agriculture baseline so they have not counted.
Additionally, the baseline that we're operating under for this farm bill is below the baseline that we operated under for the last farm bill.
Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman.
I should note that the gentleman mentioned that we've cut billions of dollars since the last farm bill. We haven't cut anything. The reason that not as much has been paid out under countercyclical or some of the other programs is being a product of high prices, and that's as the program works. But I should note that even though there have been high prices, we're still having disasters seemingly everywhere with very loose definitions of what a disaster is, and I would suggest that we will have those again, whether or not we include a permanent disaster title. That's what experience tells us. That's what we've learned just over the past few years. It doesn't matter if you include a permanent disaster title or you include this under the baseline, you will have disaster payments go out.
And my plea would be let's stand for the taxpayer here. We don't often do that in the Congress. Let's say that enough is enough, that we can't continue to pay out money on top of money that we said we weren't going to pay out.
Again, I thank my colleagues for their indulgence. I know we went a little longer than we thought.
I would urge support for this motion to instruct.
Let's keep what the House did and reject the disaster title that the Senate put in.
I yield back the balance of my time.