[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 66 (Monday, April 24, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5568-S5569]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              RURAL SUMMIT

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I come to the floor for a different 
purpose today, however. I want to describe something that is happening 
tomorrow in Ames, IA, and something that happened last Friday in 
Bismarck, ND.
  Some many months ago, I and Congressman Dick Durbin, from Illinois, 
asked President Clinton to host a rural summit in our country prior to 
the writing of the new 5-year farm bill in Congress this year. The 
President took our suggestion and set December 1 of last year as a date 
for a rural summit. It would be the first ever of its kind held in this 
country prior to the writing of a new farm bill.
  On December 1, it turned out that the Senate was going to reconvene 
and vote on the GATT treaty, and the result was the rural summit had to 
be postponed. The President was required to remain in Washington, and 
others who were to participate were to remain here as well. A new date 
was set, and that new date is tomorrow.
  The President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Agriculture, and 
other Cabinet Members will go to Ames, IA, and they will convene a 
rural summit. The purpose of that is to discuss, before the new farm 
bill is written, what works and what does not in rural America, what 
kind of a farm program works to save family farmers, to try to provide 
an injection of economic life into rural economies; how can we improve 
on it, how can we change it, how can we offer more hope to rural 
America?
  I give great credit to President Clinton for his willingness to do 
this. It is long overdue that we take a fresh look at all of the 
programs and all of the initiatives and all of the efforts that are 
designed to try to help rural America. This is, after all, one country, 
not many countries, and the one country includes, yes, some of the 
biggest cities but also some of the smallest counties.
  In my home county in rural North Dakota, as an example, where fewer 
than several thousand people live in the entire county, they lost 20 
percent of their population in that county in the 1980's. In the first 
5 years of the 1990's, from 1990 to 1995, the new census report shows 
they lost another 11 percent of their population.
  The flip side of economic stress, that we register in the cities by 
taking a look at poverty and unemployment, for rural America is out 
migration, people getting in their car and leaving because there is no 
opportunity, they feel, in rural counties. What is happening in rural 
America is that many rural counties and rural areas are shrinking like 
prunes. The lifeblood is leaving these rural counties.
  And so the question is what works and what does not, what kind of a 
farm plan, what kind of a rural economic development policy should we 
have in rural America to give everybody in this country a chance; yes, 
even those who live in sparsely populated areas.
  Prior to the summit that will be held in Ames, IA, tomorrow, the 
President asked the new Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, to hold 
six regional forums around the country, and he has done that. I believe 
the last one is today in Illinois. He held one of those six forums in 
Bismarck, ND, last Friday.
  At that forum, the Secretary of Agriculture brought along most of the 
Assistant Secretaries, and they were all there as a team from the U.S. 
Department of Agriculture to listen to family farmers. About 700 to 800 
people crowded into this facility, the Farmers Livestock Exchange, to 
spend 3 hours at this forum. Another probably 200 people could not get 
into the facility, but because it was broadcast on a couple of radio 
stations, there were people sitting in the parking lot listening to 
their radios to hear the discussion during these 3 hours about rural 
America, about the farm bill, and about what works to try to rescue, 
revive, and breathe some life into rural America.
  I know this subject would not sound very interesting or important to 
a lot of Americans. Most Americans take a look at rural America or 
farmers and they do not think much about them. They go to the store and 
buy elbow macaroni, and it is in a carton. Well, elbow macaroni does 
not come in a carton. That is the way it is sold, but it comes from 
semolina flour. You get that by grinding durum wheat that comes from 
the wheat field of someone who, most often, is a family farmer who 
risks all of his economic strength 
[[Page S5569]] and crosses his fingers and hopes he will not get rained 
on too much, or that it will not be too dry, or that insects do not 
destroy the crop. They hope to harvest it, and when they harvest it, 
they hope the price will not be so low that they lose a ton of money. 
Those are the risks and uncertainties they face.
  Why did anywhere from 800 to 1,000 people show up Friday in Bismark, 
ND, to meet Secretary Glickman and talk to him for 3 hours about what 
they think ought to be done? Because it is their livelihood, their 
future. This is not a case of it being inconvenient if things do not 
work out. This is a case of losing everything you have if you are on a 
family farm and things do not work out.
  The basic message Friday in North Dakota by all of those family 
farmers and others speaking to the Agriculture Secretary was a message 
that the current farm program is not enough and does not work very 
well. That does not mean that we need more in order to make it work 
better. The resources we now spend on the farm program in this country, 
better applied, could provide a better life for family farmers by 
providing a safety net to give family farmers a chance to make a decent 
living.
  We do not need to provide farm price support to the biggest corporate 
agrifactories in America for every bushel of grain they produce; yet, 
we do--a loan rate for everybody in the program for every bushel of 
wheat they produce, no matter how large they are.
  We have all seen reports that the Prince of Liechtenstein was getting 
benefits for farming in Texas, and a group of Texans who concocted a 
consortium or amalgamation partnership of sorts and they farm in 
Montana, section by section, by dropping seeds out of the helicopters. 
They are not farming the land; they are farming the farm program. We 
have seen those abuses. We ought to eliminate them.
  We ought to change the farm program so that we have a farm program 
that is actually able to spend less money but provide more help to 
family-sized farmers. I have submitted a proposal, and I have entered 
it into the Record, and I have written about it, and I will provide a 
piece I have written on the subject.
  This proposal is substantially different than the current farm 
program. It says let us retain a basic safety net of support prices, 
and do it in a way that provides the strongest support for the first 
increment of production, which has the ability to provide the most help 
for family-sized farms. Above that, you do not need price supports. If 
you want to farm the whole county, God bless you. But the Federal 
Government does not have to be your financial partner. You can assume 
those risks alone.
  Second, in addition to a better price support for production designed 
to help family farmers, let us get government off farmers' backs and 
stop having government describe what they can plant, when they can 
plant, and where they can plant it. Let us get family farmers better 
prices for the output of their production, and let the rest of the 
people above that--if you want to plant above that--get their signals 
from the marketplace. More help, less government, at less cost. That is 
what I want to see from a farm program.
  If the purpose of the farm program is not to help family farmers, if 
that is not the first sentence or preamble of the farm program--we 
design a farm program because we want the farm program to try to 
provide a safety net under family farmers, because for social and 
economic reasons it is important for America to have a network of 
family farms, and family farmers do not have the financial strength to 
withstand price depressions that are international price swings; they 
do not have the financial strength to withstand crop failures and price 
depressions, so that is why we have a safety net.
  If that is not the first line of the farm bill, saying this farm bill 
is designed to provide a safety net for family-sized farms, then scrap 
the whole farm bill. We do not need a farm bill to help corporations 
plow. They will do fine. They are big enough, strong enough, and they 
can plow enough land to farm the whole country. That is fine. I do not 
happen to think that is good for the country, but if that is who is 
going to plow the ground in America, they do not need the farm program.
  If it is about helping farmers get a decent price support, make that 
the first line in the farm bill and make the bill comport to that.
  In the early 1860's, President Abraham Lincoln created a U.S. 
Department of Agriculture. By the way, he had nine employees in the 
Department of Agriculture in the 1860's. One and a third centuries 
later, we have a USDA, but it has 100,000 employees, that is adding the 
Forest Service to it. It is a behemoth organization. My central premise 
is that it is either going to help family farmers, or we do not need 
any of the USDA.
  The President has done the right thing in having regional farm 
forums. They are having a rural summit at Ames, IA, tomorrow to listen 
and hear what farmers are saying in this country and then write a new 
farm plan that does real good for family farmers.
  Let us not just do what we have done for the past couple of farm 
plans and say we will have the same farm plan but a little less. I do 
not support that. Let us change it in a way that says this farm program 
relates to the needs of family farmers, and do it in a way that costs 
less money to the Federal Government and also has less Government 
interference in the lives of our farmers.
  I am not going to be able to be in Ames, IA, tomorrow. The President 
invited me to go. He invited Congressman Durbin to go. Since the House 
of Representatives is not in session, I expect that Congressman Durbin 
will be there. I was not able to take advantage of the President's 
invitation because it appears we are going to have votes in the Senate 
tomorrow.
  I was pleased to participate in the regional forums, and I am 
delighted to have been a small part in doing what I think we should do 
in this country--having the President convene a rural summit and start 
thinking and talking about what works and what does not, what can work 
to breathe economic life into our rural counties and towns, what can 
give people in those areas an opportunity for the same kinds of jobs 
and hope and future that many others in our country now have.
  Mr. President, I want to say that I appreciate the indulgence of the 
Senator from Washington. I will be coming to the floor to speak on the 
subject that is on the floor--product liability--at some point in the 
future. I am on the Senate Commerce Committee and am interested in the 
subject. I appreciate his allowing me to speak in morning business on 
another matter.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  

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