Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Thank you to my colleague, Chairman Lucas. Thank you to Ranking Member Peterson.

We agree: crop insurance is not broken. I stand here today to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that recently Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack sat in our Agriculture Committee hearing and said that crop insurance is not broken. Crop insurance is one of the most successful programs we have in the Midwest as you heard in this debate. We see that we're not doing off-budget disaster assistance. We see that farmers are willing to give up direct payments to have better risk-management tools like crop insurance.

Let's also get to the point, too, that bankers, our creditors, will not give loans to our farmers and keep our family farms in business without a strong risk-management program like the effective crop insurance program that we have.

I urge all of my colleagues to oppose this amendment. We need to ensure that this risk-management tool, crop insurance, stays as viable and as effective as it is; and I stand here today and agree with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and agree that crop insurance is not broken. Please oppose this amendment.

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