[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 59 (Thursday, April 12, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4439-S4440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. DORGAN (for himself, Mr. Hagel, Mr. Johnson, Mr. 
        Brownback, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Conrad, Mr. Salazar, Mr. 
        Rockefeller, Mr. Coleman, Ms. Landrieu, Mrs. Lincoln, Mr. 
        Harkin, and Mr. Pryor):
  S. 1093. A bill to reward the hard work and risk of individuals who 
choose to live in and help preserve America's small, rural towns, and 
for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by Senators 
Hagel, Johnson, Brownback and nine of our colleagues today in re-
introducing the New Homestead Act of 2007. This legislation will help 
address a serious threat to the economic future of rural America--the 
loss of its residents and Main Street businesses.
  I have previously described to my Senate colleagues the severe 
economic and social hardships that population out-migration has had on 
America's Heartland when businesses are shuttered up, schools and 
churches are consolidated or closed altogether. Hundreds of thousands 
of people have left small towns in rural areas throughout the Great 
Plains. If you are a business owner, mayor, school board member, 
minister or resident of one of these rural communities, you know 
firsthand about this problem. People who are from these areas know that 
you simply can't grow or run a business in an environment where the 
overall economy is shrinking, current and potential customers are 
leaving, and public and private investment is falling. Too many 
communities in North Dakota and other rural States lack the critical 
mass of people and resources it takes to keep a community alive and 
growing.
  Rural counties in North Dakota and heartland States have experienced 
massive net out-migration in recent decades and this trend is 
continuing today. Forty-seven of North Dakota's fifty-three counties 
suffered net population losses between 2000 and 2005. My home county, 
Hettinger, saw its population dwindle from 4,257 in 1980 to just 2,715 
in 2000. Its population is projected to drop to just 1,877 by 2020.

[[Page S4440]]

  However, this out-migration problem isn't limited to North Dakota. 
Nearly all of America's Heartland is facing significant population 
losses. Over the past fifty years or so, nearly two-thirds of rural 
counties in the Great Plains lost at least one third of their 
population.
  One of the major problems caused by chronic out-migration is the 
dwindling workforce of young people. A recent analysis and report 
prepared by Dr. Richard Rathge at the North Dakota State Data Center 
highlighted this concern. His report revealed that the steady out-
migration of young adults over the last half century or so has 
significantly reduced the proportion of individuals age 20 to 34 in our 
rural counties. The report predicts that between 2000 and 2020, the 
prime working age population in North Dakota, those aged 35 to 54, will 
decline from 183,435 to 146,717, a loss of nearly 37,000 people. If 
this trend continues as predicted, there will be more elderly North 
Dakotans age 65 and older in the year 2020 than individuals who are in 
their prime working years. As the report concluded, this dwindling 
labor pool could have a devastating economic impact on rural 
communities that are already struggling from a loss of residents, 
businesses and investments needed to survive.
  We believe the bipartisan New Homestead Act will help reverse the 
depopulation of our rural communities by giving people who are willing 
to commit to live and work in high out-migration areas for 5 years tax 
and other financial rewards to help them to buy a home, pay for 
college, build a nest egg, and start a business. These incentives 
include repaying up to $10,000 of a college loan, offering a $5,000 tax 
credit for the purchase of a new home, protecting home values by 
allowing losses in home value to be deducted from Federal income taxes, 
and establishing Individual Homestead Accounts that will help people 
build savings and have access to credit.
  It also provides tax incentives to encourage businesses to move to or 
expand their operations in high out-migration rural counties, including 
tax credits for investments in rural buildings and to offset the cost 
of equipment purchases and operating expenses of small businesses with 
five or fewer employees. Very little, if any, private venture capital 
is invested in out-migration rural counties, so the New Homestead Act 
also establishes a new $3 billion venture capital fund with state and 
local governments as partners to ensure that entrepreneurs and 
companies in these areas get the capital they need to start and grow 
their businesses.
  The United States Senate has previously passed parts of the New 
Homestead Act, but those and other provisions in the bill have not yet 
been signed into law. But there is good reason to think we will make 
significant progress on the New Homestead Act in the 110th Congress.
  In March, the Senate passed S. Con. Res. 21, to establish a budget 
plan for fiscal year 2008. This resolution allows for Senate action on 
the kinds of policies provided in the New Homestead Act. Specifically, 
Section 306 of the budget authorizes the Budget Committee Chairman to 
revise the levels in the resolution by $15 billion for revenue-neutral 
legislation that would, among other things, provide rural development 
investment incentives for counties impacted by high rates of out-
migration.
  The Senate's action on the budget signals that Federal policy makers 
in the U.S. Senate do understand that rural out-migration is a serious 
threat to the economic well-being of the Nation's Heartland. My 
colleagues and I will work closely with the leaders of the Budget 
Committee and the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee to secure 
passage of New Homestead Act provisions in the coming year.
  I urge my colleagues to support the New Homestead Act in the 110th 
Congress by cosponsoring it and helping us move this important bill 
forward in the legislative process.
                                 ______