[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 14 (Thursday, February 1, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S728-S729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PASSAGE OF A FARM BILL

  Mr. GRASSLEY. In the last hour and 15 minutes I believe, both before 
the floor leaders talked and since, we have heard people on both sides 
of the aisle speak about not having a farm bill, why we do not have a 
farm bill, even who is to blame for not having a farm bill. The fact is 
we do not have one, and it looks as if we are not going to have one.
  We heard earlier during debate how awful it was--we heard this from 
the other side--that we were not going to be able to pass a farm bill. 
You have heard many times this evening that the President vetoed a farm 
bill, a 7-year farm bill in December. The President vetoed it after it 
passed Congress.
  You heard this side of the aisle blamed because we have not passed a 
farm bill when this afternoon we had 53 votes for the Freedom to Farm 
Act. A majority of this body supported the Freedom to Farm Act.
  Now, it is one thing to say it is too bad we do not have one, we 
ought to have one, we ought to stay here and work to get one, but it 
seems to me it takes a lot of gall from the other side of the aisle to 
blame this side of the aisle that we do not have a farm bill when we 
either did pass one and the President vetoed it or we demonstrated 
today that we had the votes to pass another one.
  It just does not add up. It just does not make sense. I do not think 
the American people are going to buy that argument. They can add. They 
know what a majority vote is. They know what it means when a President 
vetoes a bill. They know what it means when the President threatened 
this week to veto a bill that came out of the House Agriculture 
Committee by a bipartisan vote, the substance of which was the backbone 
for the legislation that we had 53 votes for here today. The President 
did not even wait until it got to his desk, a bipartisan bill. The 
President threatened to veto it.
  It happens that there was a Lugar-Leahy alternative that could have 
been before this body. What is the Lugar-Leahy bill? It is the freedom 
to farm bill with a list of about 10 things that the Democrats wanted 
us to include in the bill, that we included. It was their language, 
their points. We included them. We never even got to a vote on that 
today. The President had already sent a letter up here--it has been put 
in the Record by the floor leader--that he was threatening to veto 
that. And we are being admonished by the other side of the aisle that 
we should have a bipartisan bill because we have always had farm bills 
developed in a bipartisan manner?
  The Lugar-Leahy bill had added to it just exactly what the other side 
of the aisle wanted. Well, there may be people on the other side of the 
aisle who do not like what was in Lugar-Leahy, but they cannot say it 
was not bipartisan. It seems to me they cannot blame this side of the 
aisle because we do not have a farm bill, and particularly when the 
President said he was going to veto it before we ever got to it.
  Then we are told that what was bad about the freedom to farm bill 
that was in the Balanced Budget Act was that it was going to cut $13 
billion, three or four times what the President wanted cut, from farm 
programs in an attempt to balance the budget. But the bill that got 53 
votes today only cut $4 billion, 

[[Page S729]]
and that $4 billion is exactly equal to what the President had been 
suggesting all last year what should come from programs in an effort to 
balance the budget.
  Mr. President, I think the debate today is bigger than the debate 
about just the farm bill. The debate today is what the last election 
was all about, whether or not we are going to continue to do business 
as usual or whether or not there is going to be some changes. The 
people in the last election sent a message--no longer business as 
usual.
  It seems to me, as far as agriculture is concerned, no longer 
business as usual is that we do not continue to rely on 1949 
legislation as backup legislation. The 1949 act was written for 
agriculture of the 1940's and 1950's, when all we were concerned about 
was domestic consumption and production to meet that domestic demand. 
It was all based upon allotments, a great deal of Government 
regulation, and a great deal of decisionmaking, even more than under 
the 1990 farm bill, here in Washington, DC. That is not the farm 
environment, the agricultural economic environment of the 1990's, and 
it surely is not for the next century. The 1990 farm bill is not even a 
Government program for the next century.
  So what we tried to develop this year was a farm program that would 
bring us around to a point where we could meet the demands for 
agriculture in the next century and the realities of the world trading 
environment. That is what freedom to farm is all about, to provide 
transition payments that are certain payments that will get us from 
1996 until the year 2002, with farmers being able to make decisions on 
what to plant and what to market based upon the marketplace and not on 
the decisions of faceless bureaucrats in Washington, and, lastly, not 
to set aside our productive capacity, but to produce for the demands of 
the world marketplace and to tell our world competition that we are 
going to do it and compete with every market we can and meet that world 
competition.
  That is what the legislation that we got 53 votes today for is 
intended to do. But ``business as usual'' are people, as the vote went 
today, mostly on the other side of the aisle, as I can see it, who want 
to maintain Government involvement in the decisionmaking for the 
farmer, to have the possibility of not producing to capacity to meet 
the world marketplace, the demands of the hungry around the world, and 
to make sure that we have a roller coaster of Government support for 
agriculture--high payments when prices are moderate and no payments 
when prices are higher.
  What is wrong with that, Mr. President, is, as we transition into an 
agriculture environment that meets world competition and trade, there 
is not any certainty in that as there is in the freedom to farm bill.
  There are some farm organizations, Mr. President, who actually 
believe that the Government ought to have their fingers into every 
aspect of agriculture. I believe they will not be satisfied until there 
is as much regimentation of American agriculture as there is of 
European agriculture by the European governments.
  Business as usual on the farm debate is a desire to maintain the 
fingers of Government into agriculture to the greatest extent possible. 
It is all right to do that if that is what you believe. But it is not, 
it seems to me, right in the process to blame Republicans when you 
cannot have a farm bill when the President of the other party vetoed it 
and we had 53 votes on a bipartisan bill to pass it this year or a 
bipartisan vote to get it out of the House Agriculture Committee 
earlier this week.
  It seems to me it is OK to have that philosophy of maintaining 
Government's fingers in agriculture, but you should not be blaming us 
for not passing a farm program. What the major farm organizations of 
America want, it seems to me, is that we have to have a farm program 
that meets this new economic environment. That is what freedom to farm 
is all about.
  It seems we heard debate today, again from the other side of the 
aisle, about sometimes not enough money being in agriculture because 
the Balanced Budget Act of 1995 would have taken $13 billion out of the 
baseline.
  Then the next time, we are being admonished that we have a program 
that is going to let farmers receive some payments when prices are 
high. We present a farm bill that has $6 billion for the year we are in 
when the program that we accepted from the other side of the aisle 
would not have any payments this year in the sense that it would be 
done away with as a result of farmers paying back last year's 
deficiency payment.
  With the certainty of $43 billion over the next 7 years, we have a 
chance in those parts of rural America where they did not have a good 
crop last year to benefit from the higher prices of grain this year, 
but yet they would be caught with writing a check back to the Federal 
Government for the advance deficiency payment that they got last year.
  Our program would solve that. It would have a $6 billion investment 
in agriculture, it seems to me just exactly what we are hearing the 
other side of the aisle cry about that our farm program was taking $13 
billion out of the baseline.
  I hope that we can reach an agreement. The way things developed 
today, when you have a situation where the Democratic and Republican 
leaders get together and we on this side of the aisle buy everything 
that the Democratic leader asked for, and it looks like we have a 
bipartisan agreement put together, and then the other side cannot even 
go with a sweetheart deal that we accept--as I said once before on the 
Lugar-Leahy bill, there were 10 or 12 items that they put on a sheet of 
paper that they wanted, and we just accepted them. Yet, in the caucus 
for the other side, they cannot agree to move forward tonight. And when 
they come out of that caucus, then they come to the floor and blame us 
when we had 53 votes, a majority vote to pass a bill, they blame us?
  That is what I mean when I say I think it takes a lot of gall when we 
take almost everything they want, I guess, in these two instances, 
everything they ask for, and then eventually we cannot move forward.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.

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