[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H743]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              FARM LEGISLATION FOR 1996 NEEDS TO BEGIN NOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ewing] is recognized during 
morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EWING. Mr. Speaker, I come here today to talk about something 
that is basic to America and basic to this country, and something that 
we need to take action on, and that deals with farm legislation for 
1996.
  We need to take action now, because even while you may have been 
snowed in here in the Nation's capital and winter holds its grip across 
this Nation, it is but a few weeks until we will be going to the fields 
in my district in Illinois, and, yes, across the whole Nation. It is 
time that we take action.
  Unfortunately, the farm bill for 1996 and the next 7 years, which 
contributed $13 billion to deficit reduction, was vetoed by President 
Clinton when he vetoed the Balanced Budget Act. So since there has been 
no agreement with the President on a true balanced budget and it does 
not appear that one is going to happen, we have got to take care of 
agriculture policy, food policy for this Nation, just as we would our 
military policy if he had vetoed that bill also.
  We need to do it in a bipartisan way. Agriculture and agricultural 
policy has, for the most part, always been a bipartisan effort. We need 
to do that, and I am sure that the gentleman from Kansas, Chairman 
Roberts, is working in that regard, and the gentleman from Texas, 
ranking member de la Garza, is also very cooperative. But we are late, 
and now is the time to take action; we cannot wait any longer, and be 
doing what is good for the country.
  What are the options? Well, of course, if the President would agree 
to a balanced budget that this Congress could approve, we could put it 
in that act. As I said, that is not probably going to happen.
  We could do it as an independent bill, or we could attach it to the 
next CR, which I feel certain will be passed, and we could pass it on 
to the President, and hopefully he would sign it.
  Now, another option is to extend the farm policy that has been in 
effect up until October 1 of last year. But, see, that policy does not 
contain the reforms, the market orientation, that we had in the new 
bill. It is counterproductive to go back and extend old policy, which 
really decreases the amount of investment we are going to put into our 
food policy and our food programs in this country. It is tired old 
policy. It is time to retire it. We need to move on.
  The final option is we could go back to a 1949 act, and that is not 
practical at all. Certainly legislation in 1949 does not now cover the 
needs of agriculture today.
  Finally, on this issue, let me say that the Secretary of Agriculture 
is considering retiring some of the CRP ground, the Crop Reserve 
Program. This program has been very beneficial to the environment, and 
I think that we should ask the Secretary to go very slowly in releasing 
millions of acres of ground, some of which should not be put back into 
cropland, to be put into crops. We should not overreact the first time 
in two decades that we have decent commodity prices and farmers across 
this country have a chance to be profitable. As we move with the new 
farm bill out of government-controlled agriculture, let us not kill the 
goose before it has a chance to lay a golden egg. I would ask that the 
Secretary of Agriculture take the very limited option in reducing CRP 
ground, and let us follow the pattern and see what happens before we 
get into it too deeply.

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