[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 14 (Thursday, February 1, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          A CLEAR FARM POLICY

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I think I and a lot of other Senators are 
very frustrated at this moment as we have tried to move this issue over 
the last several weeks.
  All of us agree that the agricultural community deserves to hear a 
clear message from the Congress of the United States that relates to 
farm policy. I am terribly disappointed that this afternoon we could 
not gain cloture, that the other side chose to kill freedom to farm. We 
also put up an excellent alternative to that and that--we could not 
work with that issue.
  Obviously, farm policy in its formation has always been bipartisan. I 
was confident this afternoon, or at least I thought I could be, that we 
had worked for several days to build that bipartisan compromise and 
still maintain the kind of levels of expenditure that sent a clear 
message to American agriculture that there would be some safety nets 
but, at the same time, that they were going to move toward the market 
as they have told us--week after week, month after month, as we have 
held hearings in the Senate Agriculture Committee this year--that a 
reinstatement of current policy simply would not work anymore and it 
should not work.
  While I know none of us at this moment are working on a reinstatement 
of current policy, I am very concerned to see us edging back toward it 
at a time when agriculture has said to us that is not where we ought to 
head.
  So I hope we can arrive at something over the weekend and into next 
week. It is my understanding the House may not be able to get there, as 
we had hoped, so we could at least show the American farm community a 
timetable that we are all going to be sensitive to. But I am 
disappointed, and I think we all are, that this cannot be resolved in 
the fashion we had hoped.
  I am going to have to, as I think others on this side are, look a 
great deal more closely at the deals that are being put together. We, 
in my opinion--certainly from this Senator's point of view--have gone 
as far as I know is possible to go without saying to Idaho agriculture 
we have decided not to do what we told you we were going to do and what 
most of you had agreed to. I presented legislation yesterday that had 
the full endorsement of the American Farm Bureau and a variety of other 
organizations, wheat growers, corn growers and others. I had hoped we 
could arrive at that in a timely fashion.
  It appears we are not there. I hope we are closer than I am led to 
believe we might be. But, to the leader who, I know, has worked today, 
and the minority leader, I hope we can get this accomplished and the 
final plans worked out. Timing is of the essence, that we resolve it. 
It should have been resolved today.

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