[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 28, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H1415-H1416]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       FAILING U.S. SUGAR PROGRAM

  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Madam Speaker, today, I would like to bring to 
the attention of the House the problems with the failing U.S. sugar 
program. The sugar daddy of corporate welfare is one of the most 
egregious programs that we have in the Federal Government, and it is 
now in the process of imploding.
  It is a really bad, big government program that is hard to understand 
in our great government we have here that we continue to have a program 
that just does not fit in our free enterprise capitalistic economy that 
we have. It is a program that is bad for the consumer. It is bad for 
jobs in this country. It is bad for the environment. It is bad trade 
policy. It just makes zero economic sense.
  The way the program works is, the Federal Government kind of acts 
like OPEC, they want to manage supply to keep the prices high. Now, we 
are required to allow some sugar to be imported into the United States. 
The Government has a loan program that they say we will guarantee the 
price will not drop below this amount or else we will buy the sugar. 
Well, all of a sudden for the first time in decades, they are on the 
verge of getting ready to buy a lot of sugar.
  As reported in the newspaper this morning, the AP wire service story 
says ``got a sweet tooth? Uncle Sam wants you.'' The Government is 
thinking about buying 250,000 tons of surplus sugar to pump up the 
domestic price, but then what will officials do with all the sugar? 
Enough to fill two-thirds of the Empire State Building. One idea is to 
donate it overseas; although, no country has indicated they are willing 
to even take it.
  This is just the beginning, as the article goes on to say. We are 
talking about $550 million worth of sugar that our agriculture 
department is going to have to buy this year, and it has no place to 
even give it away. Wow, do we have an embarrassing situation here in 
Washington.
  The production of sugar has gone up by 25 percent in the past 3 
years, because we have this high price. The price of sugar in the 
United States is three times what it is around the world. You can go 
across the border into Canada, and it is a third of the price of the 
United States; or go to Mexico, it is a third of the price of the 
United States.
  What is happening to jobs in the United States? We take companies 
that use a lot of sugar. Hey, I cannot compete with the Canadian 
companies that use a lot of sugar. For example, Bobs Candies from 
Georgia makes candy canes. The candy canes use a lot of sugar, and it 
is a lot cheaper to produce them in Canada or Mexico or some other 
place that buys sugar for a third of the price. So we are losing jobs 
in the country because sugar is used in so many of our different 
products, whether it is cereal or baked goods.
  It is a very costly thing. In fact, the General Accounting Office 
says it costs over a billion dollars a year extra per year on the 
consumer, because of the high price we pay for sugar. This is really a 
regressive program, because the poor pay a lot higher percentage of the 
total income for the sugar program.
  It is bad for the environment. I am from Florida. We are considered 
to

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have a real national treasure, the Everglades; and one of the real 
contributing problems to the Everglades environmentally is the runoff 
from the sugar plantations in Florida.
  Now, we have this high price of sugar. They are growing more sugar in 
Florida and causing more runoff, and now we are having to buy this 
sugar from the sugar programs. We are going to spend $8 billion 
restoring the Everglades. We are encouraging even more production in 
the sugar. This is one program that is hard to comprehend how you 
justify it in our country.
  Let us talk about trade issues. When we negotiate trade agreements, 
what we really want to do is encourage our products to be exported 
around the world, whether it is orange juice from Florida or airplanes 
from Boeing or computers or computer software. We want to open up 
markets so we can sell our products. The problem our negotiators have 
is that we will go around and say, country, you need to open up your 
markets for us, as we are talking about China, but do not sell us any 
sugar, we want to protect our sugar plantations, our sugar barrens in 
Florida and elsewhere around the country, because we have to protect 
them; but we want you to let us sell anything we want to your country.
  Explain to a trade negotiator how you explain that one away. As Mr. 
McCain has talked about in campaign finance, this is a poster child for 
campaign finance. Mr. McCain actually led the effort over in the Senate 
side to get rid of this program. Mr. Gore came out with his plan.
  Sugar is one of the biggest contributors, not only in Washington, it 
is in Tallahassee. They are claiming poverty, but they are the biggest 
donors of PAC contributions in the campaign. It is on both sides of the 
aisle, Republicans and Democrats.
  Now, I used to study economics in graduate school. And I know some 
economics. There is zero way to explain the economics of this. You have 
let the marketplace happen. We are not a socialistic country. Socialism 
does not work where the government manages prices, tries to manage 
production. It does not work, so we have to get rid of a program like 
this.
  I am encouraging my colleagues as this program starts costing us 
hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars in the government, 
we cannot afford to continue to allow this. I urge my colleagues to 
join with me and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) in a 
bipartisan effort to get rid of the sugar program.

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