[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 98 (Thursday, July 15, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8141-S8143]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ISSUES CONFRONTING RURAL AMERICA

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, farming, ranching, and agriculture and 
agri-related businesses continue to play a

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vital role in our economy. Food and fiber jobs account for 16 percent 
of our total workforce. Agriculture makes up 12 percent of our gross 
domestic product, and 9 percent of our trade exports. In fact, we have 
a $10 billion positive balance on agricultural trade, in sharp contrast 
to our overall $490 billion trade deficit.
  In many States, like my home State of South Dakota, agriculture is 
the number one industry. Communities rely heavily upon the agricultural 
economy. Many rely almost solely upon it. That is why, as the national 
spotlight focuses on rural America, it is so important to ask: Are we 
doing right by rural America? Are we doing all we can to ensure that 
the deep heritage in our Nation's rural way of life remains not only 
viable, but strong and vibrant?
  Unfortunately, over the past 4 years, our Government has not done 
right by rural America. It has not provided the fair policies that our 
family farmers, ranchers, and rural business people deserve. And while 
I am sure rural residents appreciate the attention their communities 
have received this campaign season, short snippets on the evening news 
do not do justice to the serious challenges they are facing.
  Per capita income for rural residents is less than 70 percent of that 
for urban residents, and rural workers are roughly twice as likely as 
urban workers to earn only the minimum wage. Rural workers also have 
higher rates of underemployment, and they have less prospects for 
improving their employment situation in the future.
  Ninety-five percent of the poorest counties in the country are 
located in rural areas--95 percent. The poverty rates in many parts of 
rural America are worse than in countries we often consider to be 
``developing.''
  Of the many intractable pockets of poverty in rural America, several 
are on Native American reservations. One of those pockets is on the 
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in my home State of South Dakota. 
President Clinton called Pine Ridge, ``Ground Zero of poverty.'' Places 
like Pine Ridge have a severe lack of basic infrastructure, of roads 
and bridges; of water and waste systems; of housing and public 
utilities, all of which lead to a lack of opportunity for businesses 
and job creation.
  I have said it before, and will say it again: This is a quiet 
national crisis that we must address. Today, I would like to talk about 
just a few of the specific issues confronting rural America, and how we 
can do better.
  At this time last year, Mother nature was a little kinder than the 
previous year to farmers and ranchers across much of the Nation, 
including the Great Plains and much of the Midwest. Producers took time 
to rebuild cattle herds and grow new crops lost by the historic drought 
of 2002. That drought, by the way, was the worst drought since the Dust 
Bowl days of 1936. It was a horrible and devastating drought that cried 
out for Federal assistance, but rural America received very little help 
from the Bush administration.

  Unfortunately, this year, farmers and ranchers are dealing with new 
weather-related natural disasters. We have pockets of drought in South 
Dakota. There has been extreme flooding in many areas--including South 
Dakota and our northern neighbor, North Dakota.
  In April, even before we knew that many areas of my State would be 
impacted by weather-related disaster this year, I wrote to President 
Bush and urged him to change his long-standing opposition to 
supplemental disaster aid for farmers and ranchers. The national 
policies regarding weather-related natural disasters are--by any 
legitimate standard--failing to address the concerns of farmers and 
ranchers. That is why dozens of national farm, ranch, and rural-related 
organizations supported my disaster amendment in 2002.
  I had hoped the President would take a fresh look at what could be 
done to put in place some more adequate, and permanent, disaster-
related assistance policies. I suggested that he establish an inter-
agency working group to provide a legislative proposal that the 
administration would send to Capitol Hill.
  Many of us pledged to work, in a bipartisan fashion, to move such a 
thoughtful package forward. I wanted to see if there was a way to work 
with the President to ensure that farmers and ranchers are treated more 
like victims of other natural disasters, such as tornadoes or 
hurricanes. I was hopeful the President would respond favorably to my 
request by working in a bipartisan fashion to craft thoughtful disaster 
assistance that more adequately provides what is needed in rural 
States.
  In mid-July, I received a response to my letter. I can't express how 
disappointed I was that the letter made no mention whatsoever--none--
about my request for a legislative proposal. In essence, the letter was 
a mere regurgitation of the insufficient steps that the Agriculture 
Department had taken under existing authorities.
  I am sorry to report that as long as the Bush administration is 
around, it appears that we will be at a stalemate on disaster 
assistance. I believe if we want to do right by America, we must 
fulfill our obligations as Federal officials and respond to the 
legitimate disaster-related needs of all Americans. The Bush 
administration doesn't agree. They oppose disaster aid, pure and 
simple. That is unfortunate.
  We have also spoken many times on the floor about the need to move 
energy policy forward. Doing right by America means taking care of our 
people here at home, and that means investing in renewable fuels such 
as ethanol, wind, and biomass. There is overwhelming support for the 
renewable fuels standard which would double the use of ethanol over the 
next 10 years. The RFS would increase corn prices by as much as 50 
cents per bushel, create 214,000 new jobs throughout the economy, and 
reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil supplies, saving the 
country at least $4 billion annually in imported oil.
  Unfortunately, the RFS has been held hostage by a select group of 
House leaders who are insisting on special interest protection for 
groundwater polluters. The President has been unwilling to tell these 
House leaders to back off, and as a result, this important bipartisan 
ethanol legislation has been stalled in Congress for over 7 months.
  It is time for the President to show some leadership and choose rural 
communities and American consumers over special interests.
  In American today, meatpackers control roughly 80 percent of the beef 
market. They have been establishing what many consider a dangerous 
monopoly, allowing them to manipulate markets. But the Bush 
administration has opposed doing anything about what many think are 
glaring problems with concentration in the meatpacking industry.
  For example, instead of helping our farmers and ranchers, the 
administration opposed the ban on packer ownership that the Senate 
approved as part of the 2002 farm bill. They insisted that the 
provision be removed from the bill, essentially holding the farm bill 
hostage until the provision was removed.
  But that is not all. As we are now seeing through the Australia Free 
Trade Agreement, the administration has decided to promote 
international trade policies that will penalize our independent beef 
producers.
  Cattle prices have dropped $30 and $40 per hundredweight in the last 
year, and the Bush administration proposes a trade agreement that will, 
over time, depress our cattle and beef markets and increase unfair 
competition.
  Coupled with the issues of concentration and discriminatory trade 
agreements is the ongoing concern about how the Bush administration has 
addressed Canadian border issues in the wake of the mad cow scare. Last 
August, the Secretary of Agriculture announced a lifting of the ban on 
certain Canadian beef products but said that before anything further 
was done, there would be a public rulemaking.
  That did not happen. Only as a result of a lawsuit--yes, there had to 
be a lawsuit--USDA was forced to reverse their policies, policies that 
appear to have benefited the Canadians and select meatpackers who had 
private knowledge about special permits granted under reduced food 
safety standards. All the while, the American public was kept in the 
dark.
  That may sound unbelievable to some. And I don't claim to know all of 
the facts, which is why several of us asked for an oversight hearing on 
the matter and for the Department's Inspector General to conduct a 
thorough investigation.

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  I am pleased that the IG has agreed to look into the matter. Trust in 
government is very important. I am hopeful that the investigation, and 
an oversight hearing, will shed some light on what happened at USDA, 
and pave the way for more effective and transparent policymaking under 
this administration's watch. I don't think anyone would dispute that we 
are not doing right by rural America when we hide things and provide 
special treatment for large corporations. One thing we can do here in 
the Congress to help ranchers is to take up my bill to reinstate the 
date adopted in the 2002 farm bill for implementation of country-of-
origin labeling.
  I have asked the majority leader to allow us to consider this 
legislation, but as I have mentioned, there appears to be another 
agenda at work in the Senate.
  To refresh memories on the labeling law, which we call ``COOL,'' the 
purpose of the provision was simply to allow for certain fruits, meats, 
and vegetables to be labeled with their country of origin.
  it was a way to add value to our domestic products by offering 
American consumers and others around the world a choice about the food 
they feed their families. Polls show that Americans, in particular, 
want to ``Buy American.'' But when it comes to food, they don't have 
that choice. Labels tell us where the clothes we put on our bodies come 
from, but not where the food we put in our bodies comes from.
  To fix this discrepancy, Congress passed COOL in 2002, despite the 
Bush administration's opposition--opposition that reflected the 
position of the large meatpackers who said they didn't want the labels 
because it might add a few pennies to the cost of doing business. Never 
mind that consumers say, by a large majority, that they are willing to 
pay a few cents more to have this information.
  Notwithstanding Congress's clear decision to implement labeling, the 
administration and the meatpackers wouldn't give up. In the middle of 
the night in January, in a meeting that was closed to Democrats, Bush 
administration officials and the majority leadership added a small 
provision to the Omnibus Appropriations bill to delay the labeling law 
until 2006--essentially paving the way to killing this important 
consumer information tool.
  People ask me all the time, Why do you object to going to conference? 
Why can't you go to conference on these bills and allow the process to 
work?
  I have to say that it is exactly situations like this that 
demonstrate how things don't work in Congress sometimes. That is why, 
once again, the agreement that we reached last night on the so-called 
FSC bill was critical in ensuring adequate confidence and participation 
on the part of Democrats as we go into yet another very important 
conference.
  Are we doing right by America when we allow the Bush administration 
and a few in leadership to override the clear majority of the House and 
Senate? After all, both the House and Senate passed COOL with 
bipartisan votes.
  Are we doing right by America when we allow these sorts of back-room 
deals? We are not--clearly.
  Another topic I want to discuss for just a minute is conservation.
  I believe that we have the best farmers in the world. I also believe 
that farmers are the true American conservationists. They work the land 
they love and they take care of the land. They are the best stewards 
that we could hope for.
   But, as a Nation, we value conservation to such an extent--and this 
is a testament to the character of the American people--we value 
conservation to such an extent that we have supported programs to 
encourage farmers and ranchers and rural residents to do even more than 
they already do to protect wetlands and to preserve grassland and other 
natural areas.
   Programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program, the new 
Grasslands Reserve Program, the Environmental Quality Incentives 
Program, and the Conservation Security Program championed by Senator 
Harkin all reflect a tremendous and important commitment to 
conservation. In fact, I have said that the 2002 farm bill was the 
``greenest'' farm bill ever. Many of us remain extremely proud of those 
efforts.
  But administration officials found a way to reallocate critical 
conservation funds away from many of these important programs. They 
have, by their actions, failed to allow government to follow through on 
the promises we made to the American people in 2002.
  The Bush administration's approach doesn't recognize the important 
weight that Americans place on conservation--on protecting our natural 
resources.
  It is also out of step with what Congress and the American people 
want and expect from a farm bill that was supported by a wide 
bipartisan majority only 2 short years ago.
  These are only a few examples of the deficient rural policies that 
fail to address the very troubling figures I discussed earlier.
   If we ask, Are we doing right by rural America? The answer is 
clearly no.
   In the future, I will discuss other issues that impact rural 
America. But on these critical issues--disaster aid; energy policy; 
livestock, trade and conservation issues--on all of these matters, the 
answer is that we need a change.
   The Bush administration is not doing right by American farmers, 
ranchers, rural residents, or the communities in which they live.
   We can, and we should, do better. And I am optimistic about the 
future of rural America because I believe we will do better.
   In the coming months, rural America will get a chance to learn more 
about those who have a positive vision for the future; those who 
understand that rural residents should not be taken for granted; and 
those who know that they have an obligation to provide serious 
leadership and strive to make progress.
   Together, I am confident we will make that progress.
   I yield the floor.

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