Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, before speaking on the amendment, I wish to share--and I know everyone in the Senate wishes to share--their thoughts and prayers with the people of Oklahoma.

As the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma knows, I have a strong connection with Oklahoma. My mom grew up on a farm picking cotton in Oklahoma, and we have talked before about my grandparents, until they passed away, being there. It was a wonderful trip for my family to go to Ponca City, OK, in later years to my grandparents to visit every summer. I will never forget that in the backyard my grandparents had a tornado shelter, basically. It was on a little mound of dirt. We opened the door and it was just like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, opening the door and going down into the cellar. A couple of times in the middle of the night we had to get up and go use the cellar, and I know how frightening it was for me as a child to experience that.

I know the storms have gotten more and more intense with more and more devastation. We all hope for the very best in the recovery for all the families involved.

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Ms. STABENOW. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma.

Madam President, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I appreciate the concerns raised by the Senator, but I rise in strong opposition to block granting and cutting the food assistance program called SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for our country.

I have always viewed, as chair of the Agriculture Committee, two programs very similarly. The first is crop insurance, which is there when there is a disaster for a farmer. The second one is SNAP or the Supplemental Food Assistance Program, which is there when there is a disaster for a family. They both go up when the disasters go up, and they go down when things get better. So when we have droughts, when we have what has been happening to our farmers over the last year and before, we see costs go up for crop insurance. We don't cap that arbitrarily saying, We don't like these droughts, we don't like these breezes, we don't like all this stuff, so even though it is real important to the farmers, we are going to cap how much we will help them. The crop insurance is there.

The same thing is true for a family. It wasn't that long ago--in fact, the beginning of 2009--when we in Michigan had the highest unemployment rate in the country. I believe it hit 15.7 percent unemployment at that time. We had an awful lot of people at that time--and many who have continued although things are getting a lot better--who have paid taxes all of their lives; never thought in their wildest dreams they would ever need help putting food on the table for their families, but they did. It was temporary. The average length of time someone needs help is 10 months. But I consider that to be a point of pride for our country, that we have a value system which says we are going to make sure when families are hit with hard times through no fault of their own, they are not going to starve; they are going to be able to put food on the table for their children. I think that is the best about us.

Now that things are getting better and the unemployment rate is coming down, the cost of these programs is coming down. Our farm bill shows a cut in spending not because we have decided we are only going to help some people and not other people--some children, not other children--but because people are going back to work. They didn't need the help anymore, so we are seeing those lines go down. By the way, as crop insurance goes up because disasters and weather events have gone up, we are seeing family disasters going down, which is where we want it to go.

Unfortunately, this amendment would cap the amount of help we would give on supplemental nutrition. It would cap it for 2014 at just over half of the current levels, so we would say we don't care how many families have a problem, we don't care what happens; we don't care what happens because of weather that wipes out a business and suddenly folks who have worked hard all of their lives find they need some help they never thought they would need. This would arbitrarily cap at just over half the current levels needed to maintain the current help. It would mean absolutely devastating results for millions of families who are trying to feed their children.

If we consider the fact that about 47 percent of those who get help right now are children--almost half of the food help in this country is for children--and then we add to that another 17 percent for senior citizens and the disabled, and we put that together, we find this amendment would be insufficient to even cover those individuals, let alone the other 37 percent of men and women who get help right now. Unfortunately, block granting this program would not only--and capping it and cutting it--would not only hurt families who are counting on us for temporary help but it would create a situation where we couldn't respond during an economic recession as we can right now.

Again, crop insurance means we respond. When there is a disaster, costs and spending go up. I support that. But in this area, if we are capping and block granting and sending it back to the States, there would be no ability to be able to do that.

The other thing that I think is absolutely true for many of our States--and certainly, unfortunately, I regret to say, in my own State right now; it is a fact--is that by block granting and not requiring that the dollars be used for food assistance for families, there is no guarantee it will go to food assistance. None. When we look at the pressures on budgets and other areas for critical needs or things people feel are important, we have absolutely no guarantee that this would go to food for families.

We have a very efficient program right now. It has one of the best error rates of any Federal program right now--maybe the lowest--and we are able to efficiently support families and do it in a way that guarantees they actually get the nutritious food they need.

I am deeply concerned about the amendment. I do not support it. I think it takes us in exactly the wrong direction as a country. It leaves a whole lot of families high and dry in an economic disaster, or any kind of disaster that could occur for them. At their most vulnerable point, when they are trying to figure out what to do to get back on their feet, we create a situation where they don't even have enough food for their families to be able to feed them during their economic crisis.

I strongly urge colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

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Ms. STABENOW. I would be happy to.

Mr. INHOFE. In listening to the comments of the Senator from Michigan in opposition to this amendment, this occurred to me: Does the Senator from Michigan see that there is anything wrong with the fact that this program has increased by 100 percent in the last 4 years? And, secondly, does the Senator from Michigan see nothing objectionable about projecting this for another 4 years to be another 100-percent increase in costs?

Ms. STABENOW. First, to my friend from Oklahoma, I would say the budget office has indicated it will not only not go up another 100 percent, it is going down. So they have projected about an $11.5 billion reduction which we have put into our farm bill. It is going down because the economy is getting better.

We know that with food assistance, as the unemployment rate goes up, one of the lagging indicators, the things that aren't affected as quickly in coming down, is food assistance for families. So it is now coming down. In my judgment, it is coming down the way it should come down, which is the fact that people are going back to work; that is why it is coming down.

Again, to arbitrarily cap something as basic as food going on the table for a family is something that I, with all due respect, can't support.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, if I may ask my colleague one last question. The Senator from Michigan believes it is going to be going down, but it did not go down when the unemployment rate went down between the 2 years of 2010 and 2011. What would be different about this time?

Ms. STABENOW. Here is what we are finding--and it is not my belief, it is the CBO scoring. The Congressional Budget Office, which we rely on, provides objective scoring--not my judgment--and it is telling us it is going down. The Senator is correct that it is slow to go down. As unemployment goes down, it takes a little longer before food help goes down, because we provide some help to people as they are getting back to work even if they are not at full speed back to work. So it does go down more slowly, but they have adjusted it over the next 10 years showing that, in fact, the spending on food assistance is going down because the economy is getting better. That comes from the CBO and is built into the dollars we have in the bill.

Mr. INHOFE. One last question. Even though I disagree with the answer of the Senator from Michigan for the second question, the first question is whether the Senator from Michigan finds it objectionable that it increased by 100 percent over the past 4 years from 2010?

Ms. STABENOW. What I find objectionable is so many people lost their jobs. The reason it went up is because people were out of work. So I find that objectionable because a lot of those folks were in my State.

I have worked very hard to do everything I can to support the private sector, and the good news is that manufacturing is coming back and agriculture is strong and moving forward. So in my judgment, yes, I find it very concerning that more people needed help putting food on their table. The good news is that less of them are going to in the next decade, and that is because people are going to be getting back to work.

I believe our time has expired. I don't know if we have others who wish to speak at this point.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

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Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, as we continue debate on the Agricultural Reform, Food and Jobs Act, I want to remind my colleagues how important this bill is for our economy and for the 16 million people whose jobs rely on agriculture. When we go home at night and sit down at the dinner table, it is because those 16 million people have worked hard to make sure we had safe, affordable food on the table. They are the men and women who farmed the land. They are also the people who manufacture and sell the farm equipment, the people who ship the crops from one place to another, the people who own the farmers markets and the local food hubs, the people who work in processing and crop fertility, not to mention the researchers and the scientists who work hard every day to fight pests and diseases that threaten our food supply.

I want to talk specifically for a few moments about the work we are doing in the conservation title of the farm bill. Our farm bill improves 1.9 million acres for fish and wildlife habitat. This is about jobs as well. Healthy wildlife habitats, clean fishable waters, are not only good for our environment, but they also support hunting, fishing, and all of our other outdoor recreation that benefits our economy and creates jobs.

In fact, outdoor recreation supports over 6 million jobs in our United States.

In this farm bill we are including a new historic agreement around conservation--the most powerful conservation work in decades. It is truly amazing what can happen when people actually sit down and listen to one another and work together. If farmers want to participate in title I commodity programs, including the current Direct Payments Program, they must take steps to use best conservation practices on their land when it comes to highly eroded soil and wetlands. This has been the case for many years.

Of course, the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act we are debating now eliminates those subsidies.

Instead, we are strengthening crop insurance, which farmers need to purchase, and we are making market-oriented reforms to the commodity programs. But here is the issue: If we eliminate direct payment subsidies, we don't want to create unintended consequences by not having that link any longer. It is important for all of us that sensitive lands be managed in the best possible way. That is how we avoided having a dust bowl during the droughts. It is important for us to continue protecting wetlands, which help prevent flooding and are important to wildlife habitats for ducks and other waterfowl.

Commodity groups and conservation groups were on different sides of this issue for a long time. They looked at the issue from vastly different viewpoints, and they didn't agree on the best approach. They could have followed the very typical Washington playbook. They could have gone to their corners, fired off e-mails and press releases, brought the lobbyists in and demonized each other. But that is not what happened.

Like farmers and families across the country, they sat down together around a table and did something we don't do enough. They listened to each other. They listened and tried to see the other's viewpoint and they came to understand one another. It turned out their differences weren't so great after all. With a little compromise and a lot of hard work these groups were able to come together with a plan that conserves soil and water resources for generations to come and protects the safety net on which our farmers rely.

This has been called the greatest advancement in conservation in three decades. I want to underscore for my colleagues that this is an important historic agreement, and others deserve credit. As much as I certainly would like to take credit for this, or I am sure Senator Cochran would--and we certainly were very supportive in encouraging this--the agreement came about from a group of people working together.

I know a number of my colleagues are planning to talk about amendments on crop insurance. Some have already been on the floor talking about amendments. I know a number of colleagues voted for some of those amendments the last time around, but this conservation agreement puts us in a very different situation this year. For one thing, we want to make sure the biggest landowners who control the most acres are using crop insurance.

Crop insurance is voluntary. Prior to crop insurance, there were subsidies and then ad hoc disaster assistance. Now we are encouraging them to purchase crop insurance, and we want them to have it, which means now they would need to use conservation practices to preserve sensitive lands and wetlands on those largest tracts as well as small tracts.

So amendments that weaken crop insurance would reduce the number of farmers participating in crop insurance, raising premiums for family farmers and reducing the environmental impact and the environmental benefits of this historic conservation agreement. With this new agreement, the math is very simple: The more acres that are in crop insurance, the more we have environmental and conservation benefits.

My dear friend from Illinois came to the floor a while ago and said: The majority of crop insurance is with a small number of farmers. Well, that is true. The larger the farm, the more one would use crop insurance. It is just like saying anybody who buys insurance for a bigger home has more insurance than the smaller home. Bigger businesses--manufacturers--probably buy the biggest part of insurance rather than small businesses. I am not sure what the point is of saying that. Of course, we have large farmers buying more crop insurance than small farmers. We want to make sure we have the environmental and conservation benefits on those large farms just as on smaller farms.

Here is another reason my colleagues should reevaluate these amendments, and I would encourage, as they come before us, that we vote no. This chart shows the counties that were declared disaster areas last year. An awful lot of red. And 2012 was one of the worst droughts on record ever in the United States.

In the past, in situations such as this we would have passed ad hoc disaster assistance for the corn growers, the wheat growers, the soybean growers, and the other crop farmers. But we didn't have to do that because crop insurance works.

Crop insurance is not a subsidy. When people have crop insurance they get a bill to pay. We share in that cost to make sure there is a discount so they can afford the bill, but they get a bill. They do not get a check. The only farmers last year who needed disaster assistance were the ones who can't participate in crop insurance, which we fix in this farm bill.

We address permanent livestock disaster assistance. They do not have access to the same crop insurance. We address farmers, such as my cherry growers, who were wiped out when it got warm in the spring and then froze again and completely wiped out the cherries. They do not have crop insurance now. They need some extra help. In this farm bill we are giving them access to crop insurance, which is the primary risk management tool for farmers.

Producers purchase crop insurance so they are protected when there is a disaster, but if we weaken crop insurance, resulting in premium hikes of as much as 40 percent on small farmers, we are going to be going back to the days of ad hoc disaster assistance, something we cannot afford in today's tight budget climate.

Finally, we need to keep this historic agreement in place through the conference committee. We owe that to the folks who sat down and worked out this agreement. So I ask colleagues to stand with the 34 different organizations that came together--and I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the names of the groups in the coalition that put this together.

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Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, we need to make sure our colleagues in the House, as well as in the Senate, stand with all of these groups who worked hard to compromise and forge this very historic constructive agreement. If we want to preserve conservation wins we have in this farm bill, we need to support the farmers, the environmentalists, and the conservationists who have made it very clear this agreement is something they stand behind. We should not be weakening crop insurance or making it harder for large producers, who have the majority of the land we want to conserve, to have less of an incentive to participate in the program.

Let me just say--and I know my colleague from Vermont is here to speak as well--that I want to thank again the 34 organizations--everyone from the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Soybean Association, the Audubon Society, Ducks Unlimited, the Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, National Cotton Council--and right on down the line--the National Farmers Union, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and USA Rice Federation.

This is an incredible coalition, and it speaks very loudly both to the fact we need to keep in place the No. 1 risk management tool for our growers but that we need to also make sure they are providing the conservation practices to protect our soil and our water which is so critical for the future--for our children and grandchildren.

I yield the floor.

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