[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 129 (Wednesday, November 15, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10945-S10947]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FARMER DISASTER ASSISTANCE
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, yesterday I withdrew an amendment to
provide disaster assistance to farmers and ranchers for the disasters
of 2005 and 2006. I did so on the basis of an assurance by the majority
leader that is in the Record very clearly: we would go to the
Agriculture appropriations bill today, I would have a chance to offer
my amendment today, the rights of all Senators were protected, and that
they would have their rights. Now I am told there is an objection to
going to the Agriculture appropriations bill.
I say to my colleagues, that leaves me with no alternative but to
object to other business. I, in good faith, removed my amendment
yesterday, took it down, with the assurance--and that is in the Record,
very clearly in the Record--from the majority leader, the assurance
that we would go to Agriculture appropriations today. I alert my
colleagues I kept my word. I would hope others would keep theirs.
If that is not to be, I will be in a position in which I will be
objecting to any other business coming before the Senate. If they want
to have a live quorum, we can go through that exercise, but we will go
through it repeatedly. This is not fair. It is not right. We have tried
repeatedly to get this bill up so we can have a vote. It has previously
passed the Senate with 77 votes in favor.
What we are asking for is not unreasonable. We have reduced the cost
dramatically. Here, a person's word is their bond. I kept my word. I am
expecting others to keep theirs.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my colleague was on the Senate floor
yesterday, as I was, and he was offering an amendment on the Military
Construction appropriations bill dealing with agricultural disaster. In
exchange for withdrawing that amendment on the Military Construction
bill, he was given some assurance that the Agriculture appropriations
bill would come next to the Senate and he would be able to offer that
amendment on the Agriculture appropriations bill.
Let me, first of all, support my colleague, Senator Conrad. He knows
and I know that the Agriculture appropriations bill includes a disaster
piece that I added in the committee many months ago. That amendment I
offered in the committee was one we had worked on with Senator Conrad
and many other Senators on a bipartisan basis. It was Senator Conrad
and myself who were recognized in the committee to offer the
agricultural disaster plan. That was in the spring of this year.
Subsequent to that, we have now had a very substantial drought that
has enveloped a fair part of this country, devastating some additional
crops, and we have not been able to get the Agriculture appropriations
bill back to the Senate so we can make an adjustment to the disaster
plan for farmers, an adjustment to include the 2006 disaster, but we
have not been able to get it to the floor of the Senate. That is why my
colleague, Senator Conrad, offered it yesterday as an amendment to the
Military Construction bill. We have already passed it twice in the
Senate; that is, an agricultural disaster plan.
Two times I added it in the Appropriations Committee. On two
occasions--I believe both were with supplemental bills--both occasions
we went to a conference with the House of Representatives. I had money
in for a farm disaster plan. In both circumstances, we went to the
conference; the Senate conferees, at my request, had a vote, insisted
on the Senate position which included an agricultural disaster plan for
family farmers who got hit with the weather disaster; and on both
occasions the President threatened a veto and got the House conferees,
at the request of the Speaker, to object. Therefore, twice it got
knocked out in a conference.
The third time now, I have added the farm disaster piece to the
Agriculture appropriations bill. We did that before this growing season
in which we had a very devastating drought, so that needs to be
adjusted.
My colleague, Senator Conrad, is offering the farm disaster piece
that would try to reach out to those family farmers who now do not know
whether they will be able to continue farming, reach out with a helping
hand to say: You are not alone. We cannot make
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you whole, but we can help you during a tough time.
This Congress has already said to the farmers in the Gulf of Mexico:
You will get disaster aid because you got hit with Hurricane Katrina
and you lost your crops. You get disaster aid. This Congress has
essentially said to other farmers and this President has said to other
farmers: You might have lost all of your crops from a drought or a
flood, but it didn't have a name named ``Katrina.'' It is not like a
hurricane, it is not named; therefore, you are not going to get any
disaster help--just those who got hit with Hurricane Katrina and lost
their crops. That is not fair. No one in this country would think that
is fair.
So what we are trying to do--I in the Committee on Appropriations and
my colleague, Senator Conrad, here in the Senate with this amendment--
is to say to farmers who are out there wondering: Will our family be
able to continue on the farm next year? Will we be able to do spring
planting? Will we have the capability to put a crop in? At this point,
the answer for many of them, thousands of them, is: No, we are not
going to be able to continue farming because we had a disaster. Where a
crop should have existed on our land, there was barren land, no seeds,
no crop.
It used to be in our farm bill we had a disaster title. When a
disaster occurred, we, with that disaster title, could say to farmers:
We want to help you. Now there is no disaster title in the farm bill,
and each year when there is a disaster we have to reach out to try to
create a disaster bill.
This country goes almost every place in the world to help when there
is trouble. What about at home? What about when there is trouble on the
family farm? I know that is far from the city lights and far from the
cameras, but the fact is, that is real trouble for families whose dream
is about to end because they cannot continue farming. Why? Is it
because they mismanaged? Is it because they are not good farmers,
because they can't grow a crop? No. It is because a drought came around
and destroyed everything on their farm or it is because a flood came
and washed it away.
In 2005, in parts of our State, there were over a million acres that
could not be planted--think of that--could not be planted at all, and
nearly another 1 million planted acres and all the seeds were washed
away with torrential rain where one-third of a year's worth of rain
fell in 24 hours. Think of that. Then you say to those farmers: You
know what. Tough luck. You are on your own.
That is not the way this country has dealt with farmers. We have
always believed there is value and importance in having farmers on the
land farming and creating America's food supply. We have always said:
We want to have a bridge across troubled times for you. When price
depressions occur, when natural disasters occur, we want to create a
safety net for you. We have always done that.
Now what happens with disasters, with no disaster title in the farm
bill, we face a situation where, because of two years--2005, with
substantial flooding, and in 2006, a protracted drought in some
significant areas of the country--we face a prospect of losing a great
many family farmers just because this country will have said--if we do
not do what Senator Conrad and I and others want to do, this country
will have said: It doesn't matter. The only farmers we will help are in
the gulf region, those who were hit by a hurricane. Some of my
colleagues have said it is tempting to name a drought. Give it a name,
if that is what is required here. Give these natural disasters a name.
We do with hurricanes.
My colleague is suggesting the right remedy. We have, apparently,
some people saying we need to go to another piece of legislation.
Perhaps there is the India nuclear agreement.
My colleague says, properly--and I was in the Senate when this
exchange took place--my colleague says: Yesterday, I withdrew my
amendment from the Military Construction bill--and he did--and I heard
the discussion as a result of his withdrawing that amendment. I believe
there is an understanding that the next piece of legislation we go to,
which would be this afternoon, is the Agriculture appropriations bill.
That will give him the opportunity--and me and others--to both
introduce and speak to farm disaster aid that is long overdue, that
should have been done long ago.
Senator Conrad has indicated that he would object to other procedures
and other proceedings unless we reach an understanding of going to the
Agriculture appropriations bill. I certainly support that and would be
in the Senate with him, prepared to object, just as he would.
That is the background. That is the story. My colleague, Senator
Conrad, is perfectly within his rights. He is absolutely accurate in
terms of what we understood when we left the Senate yesterday.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeMint). The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Dorgan, and
I also point to the Record, the Record from yesterday, page S. 10900.
It says:
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I notice the majority leader has
returned to the floor. I tried to recount for our colleagues
the status of our discussion, and the understanding that we
had reached, that I would withdraw my amendment from this
bill with the understanding that we would go to the
Agriculture Appropriations bill tomorrow and have a chance to
offer it there. All Senators' rights would be reserved. That
is the status of it. I just ask if that is the majority
leader's understanding. If it is, I will then be willing to
withdraw my amendment for the Military Construction bill and
we can conclude that.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, in the last hour or so we have
had numerous discussions on the floor, as our colleagues have
observed, and many participated in the discussion. My
understanding and the general agreement we have is to go to
the Agriculture Appropriations bill tomorrow. That does
facilitate the progress we need to make on the current bill
that is on the floor, which I hope and expect to be able to
finish tonight. If that is the case, we plan on going to the
Agriculture bill tomorrow. All rights would be reserved for
all Senators, of course. We don't have an agreement, but that
is the intention.
The disaster ag relief bill is very important and has been
talked about by Republicans and Democrats and we expect to
debate it tomorrow. It is a more appropriate place for this
amendment. So I think this is a good understanding.
Mr. President, I withdrew my amendment based on that understanding. I
did it in good faith. I did it to accommodate my colleagues. I did it
so other legislation could move. But now I am told the agreement is not
going to be kept. That is not acceptable. That is just not acceptable.
That puts me in the position now of having to object to proceeding to
other business. I have no alternative but to do that.
I am here representing thousands of farm families across our State
and really right down the heartland of the country. We have 26
cosponsors for this legislation, totally bipartisan, about as many
Republicans as Democrats on the bill because we have had the third
worst drought in the country's history. That is the reality.
I have a letter on my desk from a man talking about the disaster. And
in that letter he said to me--this is from last year when we had
terrible flooding--he had 26 inches of rain over a very short period of
time. The result was he had no production, and he lost $120,000. Even
with the crop insurance, it did not come close to covering his bills,
and that he and his wife and his family were going to be forced off the
land if there were not some assistance.
Let me just recount the history. Always in our past when anyone
suffered from natural disaster in this country, anywhere, Congress
responded. Congress responded. We responded when there was Hurricane
Katrina. We responded when there was Hurricane Rita. In fact, this
gentleman says: I urged our delegation to support the victims of
Hurricane Katrina. We suffered the same kind of loss here, a complete
economic loss, but there were no news cameras seeing our disaster. We
had a slow-motion disaster but every bit as devastating.
The question is, Are those people going to be given any kind of
helping hand, the kind of thing we have done repeatedly in the past?
Now, we don't budget for disasters. Some have said it is a budget
buster. No, it is not. No. 1, there is no budget. No. 2, to the extent
we have agreed on guidelines for spending, it has always been
understood, it has always been the case for the 20 years I have been
here that natural disasters are treated separate and apart from the
budget. It
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is very hard to budget for natural disasters. Nobody knows the extent
or when they will occur. As a result, we have always dealt with
disaster spending as an emergency outside the budget.
Now, how much money is being talked about here? Mr. President, $4.5
billion for 2 years of disasters. And this is a national bill. This is
not restricted to one region, one location. This will assist anybody
who had a loss of at least 35 percent. And if you have a loss of at
least 35 percent, only then do you start to get any assistance; and
then you only get a percentage of the loss, 50 percent covered. So you
get nothing on the first 35 percent of loss, nothing. Only if you have
a loss of at least 35 percent do you get anything. If your loss is over
35 percent, you will get assistance on a highly restricted basis.
The bankers of my State have told me if this kind of assistance is
not forthcoming, 5 to 10 percent of the farmers and ranchers in our
State will go out of business, not because of any fault of theirs, but
because of the most incredible swing in weather that we have ever seen.
Last year, we had flooding that prevented a million acres from even
being planted. It was not even planted. This year, we have had the
third worst drought, according to the scientists, in our Nation's
history, a drought that Senator Dorgan and I saw firsthand in a tour
with our Governor and agricultural leaders of our State.
I even saw irrigated corn--irrigated corn--in which the ears never
filled out because the heat was so unbelievably intense. In one day in
my hometown, it was 112 degrees. I am not talking about the heat index.
I am talking about the actual temperature, 112 degrees.
In July and August of this last year, we had extreme temperatures day
after day after day, and no rain. It was devastating. And it is just
not my State. It is right down the heartland of the country: South
Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, over into Minnesota, Montana.
There are 26 cosponsors of this bill. It is fully bipartisan. This
legislation has passed overwhelmingly in the Senate with 77 votes.
So I just say to my colleagues, I was given a commitment yesterday
that we would go to the Agriculture appropriations bill today, and that
I would have a chance to offer my amendment; that Senators could raise
any objections they might have. They could raise a rule XVI objection.
By the way, we now know that would not lie against our bill. We also
know that they could raise a budget point of order. That would require
a supermajority vote. We are fully prepared to do that and to accept
the will of the body.
But what is not fair is not to have a vote. And what is especially
not fair is not to keep the commitment that was made yesterday publicly
and privately that we would go to the Agriculture appropriations bill
today and have an opportunity for a vote. That was the commitment that
was made. This leaves me with no alternative but to object to going to
other business. I will make that objection. And if I have to do it
repeatedly, I will make it repeatedly.
With that, I yield the floor.
Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator
Lautenberg be recognized for 10 minutes and that I be recognized at the
end of that period.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from New Jersey.
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