[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 86 (Tuesday, June 25, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H3862]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AGRICULTURE SUBSIDY CONCERNS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 23, 2002, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, one challenge that we have in the 
U.S. House of Representatives, in Congress, is the overzealousness to 
spend more money. Of course, the money has to come from taxpayers 
throughout the United States that pay taxes into the Federal system.
  What many politicians have discovered is that the more programs they 
start and the more money they spend, the more popular they are back 
home and the greater the likelihood they are going to be reelected. So 
members of congress take new pork-barrel projects home and end up on 
the front pages of the paper or on television: ``Congressman such-and-
such is giving you more government services.'' I think we have to 
remind ourselves that all of this money comes from taxpayers.
  I see a lot of young people, Mr. Speaker, in the gallery; and they 
are the generation at risk. As we increase spending, as we increase 
borrowing, what we are doing in effect is increasing the mortgage, the 
debt, that these young citizens are going to have to pay off some day, 
and probably increasing the likelihood that their taxes are going to 
have to continue to rise as the size of government gets larger and 
larger.
  One concern that I have that has been in a lot of the media and 
newspapers is the generosity of the farm bill that was passed in terms 
of giving million-dollar payments to many of the very, very large 
farmers in the United States. I met with Senator Grassley last week, 
and we are trying to strategize how we can change that farm bill so 
that we have some kind of a cap, some kind of a limit on those 
exceptionally large million-dollar-plus payments that are going to the 
super-large landowners in this country. We are looking now at the 
appropriation bills and language we might put in the appropriation 
bills.
  Very briefly, Mr. Speaker, this is somewhat complicated, so we have 
sort of hoodwinked a lot of the American people saying, there are 
limits on the price support that farmers can receive. But there is a 
loophole. That loophole is called ``generic certificates,'' and that 
means that when you reach the limit on monetary price supports, you can 
still forfeit the grain back to the government, and the government will 
give you a certificate that a farmer can exchange for money, because 
the limits are on cash payments to farmers and certificates are not 
considered a cash payment. That ends up being a loophole, allowing the 
very large farmers to get millions of dollars in price support 
benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a system in Congress where seniority tends to 
rise you to the top in terms of being a committee chairman. Right now 
agriculture is pretty much dominated in terms of leadership by members 
from Texas. We have the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture 
from Texas; we have the ranking member of that committee, that is the 
top ranking Democrat, from Texas. Also the chairman of the Committee on 
Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture is from Texas.
  When it turns out that Texas is one of the top States in the Nation 
that uses this generic certificate, if you will, loophole, then we see 
great political pressure to continue that loophole provision. I am in 
hopes there can be a better understanding by the American people, by 
this Congress, of what the loophole is; and that it is reasonable to 
set limits on price support payments.
  Our public policy should be to help and hopefully strengthen the 
traditional family farm in this country. That family farms might be 500 
or 5,000 acres, but it is not the 80,000-acre farms.
  Mr. Speaker, I would conclude by saying I am hopeful we can, in our 
appropriation bill, come up with some language to have an effective 
limitation on these exceptionally large payments that go to the 
exceptionally large farmers.

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