[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S569-S570]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE SUGAR PROGRAM
Mr. GREGG. Madam President, tomorrow, or possibly Friday, we will be
voting on cloture motions dealing with the Farm Program and a variety
of bills dealing with the Farm Program.
Within the context of the entire Farm Program, there are a lot of
subprograms, and one that I wish to talk about is the Sugar Program.
The Sugar Program in this country has proceeded since the early 1980's
to be a program of inordinate subsidy for a few small farmers--for a
few farmers; they are not small farmers--at the expense of the
consumers of this country.
Last year, it was estimated that the Sugar Program cost the consumers
of this country approximately $1.4 billion. It has cost the consumers
of this country approximately $10 billion over the last decade. That is
because we have in this country a system in the Sugar Program where we
artificially inflate the cost of sugar to benefit a few growers of
sugarcane and some sugar beets, but primarily in this instance it is
benefiting sugarcane growers.
This makes no sense. This program is appropriately tied to sugar, I
guess, because the last vestiges of Marxism in the world of any
significance is the nation of Cuba, which always had a sugar-based
economy.
Now, you might argue, well, China is still a Marxist nation.
Actually, China has become quite capitalistic. Cuba is the only
country, certainly in the Western Hemisphere, it is the only
dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, in the world that still
practices theoretically pure Marxism, Marxism being a system where
essentially the State sets the price and the production of all
commodities within the community. And, of course, the Cuban economy is
always based on sugar. So maybe that is why we as a nation have for
some reason decided in our sugar industry we are going to emulate Cuba
because that is essentially what we do. We have in the Farm Program
which we have designed in this country essentially a system of top-down
market controls,
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production controls which create, at best, an economic structure which
emulates what used to be the East European countries and at worst an
economic structure which basically tracks the philosophy of social
economics as designed by Karl Marx, because essentially what it does is
say that the Government will set the price, the Government will set the
production levels, not necessarily for the purposes of benefiting the
consumer but for the purposes of benefiting the producer.
We set up a structure here where the fact that sugar on the open
market can be bought for 10 cents a pound has no impact on the price of
sugar in the United States. Can you imagine that? The United States,
the center of capitalism in the world, a market that all of the rest of
the world looked to when other nations were trying to design their
economies, has put in place in our Sugar Program a structure which is
essentially a carbon copy of what they did in Eastern Europe, what they
now do in Cuba, or still do in Cuba, in what we basically call a
Socialist form of economics.
Why do we do this? Why do we have a system which penalizes our
consumers to the tune of $1.4 billion, which does not allow any
competition for the price of sugar in the marketplace, which
arbitrarily sets the cost of sugar, and which rewards a few growers of
sugarcane specifically? Seventeen growers get 42 percent of the benefit
in the sugarcane industry--17 growers get 42 percent of the benefit. In
fact, one grower gets a benefit that is estimated to be almost $68
million a year. Why do we structure a system like this? Well, at the
risk of using a pun, it is raw power, raw political power.
The fact that the sugarcane, sugar producers lobby is so strong in
the Congress of the United States, it has been able to maintain this
totally unjustifiable system. How ironic it is that when the Republican
Party, after 40 years, finally gets control over the Congress of the
United States, we continue to allow this sort of antimarket system to
flourish, to grow, and to abuse the consumers of this country.
How ironic it is that this President--and I cannot fault him
individually because the fault lies on both sides of the aisle on this
one--but this President who has made such a large issue of protecting
consumers in many other areas of his administration and has made this
his cause celebre, allows a program which every year takes $1.4 billion
out of the pockets of consumers and artificially transfers it to a
nonproductive sector of our economy--I am not sure it is unproductive--
but a sector of our economy that does not want to compete. Why should
not we have a sugar program which is willing to compete?
There are some other side effects that also we ought to be concerned
about besides the fact that we are basically taking the consumers of
this country for a ride for the benefit of a few individual growers.
There are some other issues we ought to be concerned about.
There is the issue of environmental protection, the fact that as a
result of having this artificially high-priced sugar, we have seen a
huge amount of land in southern Florida converted to cane growing which
land was the original watershed of the Everglades. It is not clear
really what would be a better use of this land. I have to admit that
the jury may still be out on that.
But before the facts are known, the Everglades are under a tremendous
effect, and the fact, first, that the water is not flowing in its
original form--and there is the belief that the sugarcane activity is
part of it--and, second, sugarcane activity is expanded artificially as
a result of this.
Another concern we should have is the effect it is having on our
neighbors in the Caribbean. We just invaded Haiti because we felt that
it was in economic and political chaos. One of the reasons that our
neighbors in the Caribbean are in economic chaos is because we do not
allow them to participate in competition with us. We have closed our
markets to one of their primary goods--sugar. We live in fear, I guess,
as a nation, that we cannot compete with Haiti.
My goodness, how absurd. Obviously, with the technologies we have and
the ability we have of growing products in this country, we can compete
with our Caribbean neighbors. We would find, I suspect, that if we were
to open our markets that sugar beets in many parts of this country
would remain very viable and very competitive, sugarcane in parts of
this country would remain very viable and very competitive, and we
would have also the added benefit of allowing some of our Caribbean
neighbors to maybe increase their standard of living a little bit by
being able to sell us a little bit of their primary product.
Maybe we would not have to go around invading them. We could save the
dollars we spend on national defense in places like Haiti, and the
dollars we spend on economic and political development in other regions
of the Caribbean because we would have to help them out through what is
known as the old-fashioned way, by letting them compete in the
marketplace with us.
So tomorrow we take up these farm bills, and there will be an attempt
to shut off debate. One of the outcomes of shutting off debate and
passage of these farm bills, or at least down the line in the farm bill
would be a 7-year extension of the outrage called the Sugar Program.
That would be a rather bitter pill for the American consumers. That is
not a sweet deal for American consumers. It may be a sweet deal to get
a 7-year extension of this program for some of the growers, but it
certainly would mean that under the present calculations that would be
about another $10 billion of tax, because that is essentially what it
is to American consumers.
So I strongly oppose the attempt to do this. And along with the
Senator from Nevada, who has joined me on this, Senator Reid, we will
do all we can, I believe, to try to avoid allowing the consumers of
this country to be once again pilfered by this program. As a result, I
will attempt to oppose cloture. I hope that others who are concerned
about the consumers of this country, about the environment of this
country, and about our neighbors in Central and Latin America, would
also join me in opposing cloture.
Because it is not right. It is not right that a few folks because of
their political influence and strength should be able to keep in place
a program which should have died when the Berlin Wall fell. The fact
is, it is very ironic and unfortunate that as a nation we continue to
promote this concept that competition should not be allowed in the
production of sugar.
It is antithetical to all the Republican Party stands for. It is time
to put an end to it.
Madam President, I thank the Chair for the time to speak. I yield
back such time as I may not have used, and I make the point of order
that a quorum is not present.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I assume that we are in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are.
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