[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 176 (Wednesday, November 14, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14359-S14360]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S14359]]
                             THE FARM BILL

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to talk a little bit about the 
status of the farm bill because I was stunned, obviously, today to find 
that the majority leader--after for 2 weeks, almost, refusing to allow 
any amendments to the farm bill--has now decided to file cloture on the 
farm bill and claim this is the way things are done in the Senate. That 
is a statement which is pretty hard to accept with a straight face: the 
concept that the majority leader would set up a process in the Senate 
which, essentially, made him the gatekeeper of all amendments to a 
major authorization and appropriations bill--appropriations in the 
sense it has mandatory spending in it--so that any Member of the Senate 
who wanted to offer an amendment would have to go through the majority 
leader before the amendment would be allowed to come to the floor. 
Well, that is the way they do things in the House of Representatives, 
obviously, with what is known as the Rules Committee. But the Senate 
does not do that. The Senate has never done that.
  I have heard innumerable, wonderful speeches from the senior Senator 
from West Virginia, the keeper, basically, of the flame of the 
integrity of the Senate, Mr. Byrd, on the importance of the amendment 
process in the Senate. I happen to subscribe to that, as I thought 
every Member of the Senate subscribed to that, that the greatness of 
the Senate is that if we put a piece of legislation on the floor, which 
is a significant piece of public policy, we debate it, we hear ideas on 
it, then we vote on those different ideas, and then we vote on passage. 
We do not lock down a bill and not allow any amendments to occur on 
that bill except those that are accepted on the majority side and by 
the majority leader and then say to the minority: Well, because you 
would not accept our process of locking down the amendment process, we 
are going to file cloture to shut you out completely.
  That truly is an autocratic level which this Senate has never seen. 
Let me tell you something, it puts us on a slippery slope. It is very 
possible--in fact, I hope likely--that the other side of the aisle may 
not be in the majority forever around here and maybe not even through 
the next election. Certainly, if they continue to produce such a 
dysfunctional legislative calendar, as they have over the last year, I 
would think the American people would get a little frustrated and ask 
for a change. But they have now opened the door to running the Senate 
as an autocratic system, as a dictatorial system where the rights of 99 
Members of the Senate are made completely subservient to 1 Member, 
which is the majority leader, because he has the right of recognition, 
he fills up the tree, and then when he does not like the amendments, he 
files cloture.
  Let's talk about some of the amendments he does not want us to hear 
on this bill relative to the farm bill. He does not want an amendment 
offered which would say to farm families, especially to mothers in farm 
families: You will have access to OB/GYNs. That is one of the 
amendments I intended to offer. It would simply say that OB/GYNs who 
practice in farm and rural communities would be immune from excessive 
liability and lawsuits from trial lawyers.
  We know for a fact we have lost most of our OB/GYNs in rural America. 
These baby doctors cannot practice in rural America because there are 
not enough clients for them to generate enough revenue to pay the cost 
of their malpractice insurance, which is generated by these lawsuits 
from trial lawyers. Well, the other side of the aisle is a kept group 
for the trial lawyers, so they do not want anything that could happen 
around here that might limit the income of trial lawyers, including 
allowing baby doctors to deliver babies in rural America to farm 
families. So they are not going to allow me to offer that amendment. 
What an outrage.
  They do not want an amendment which would give firefighters in this 
country the right to bargain in order to reach agreement on contracts. 
Now, I do not think fires just burn in cities. Farmers have fires. In 
fact, if you look at what is happening in the West with wildfires, 
there are a lot of issues of fires for farmers in this country, 
especially silo fires. I know. I come from an area where there are 
occasional silo fires. They need firefighters. But the other side of 
the aisle does not want to hear about an amendment that deals with 
firefighters' rights. No. They want to lock that amendment out of the 
process.
  They want to lock out of the process an amendment which would address 
the issue of people who are caught up in this terrible mortgage crisis 
we have. There are a lot of farmers, I suspect, and a lot of Americans 
generally who did not know how these ARMs worked when they went into 
these deals, and they are now finding they are being refinanced at a 
level where they cannot keep their homes because their interest rates 
are jumping up into the double-digit levels. When those homes are 
foreclosed on, they get a double whammy of getting hit by the IRS with 
what is known as a recognized gain, even though they did not have any 
income because their home got foreclosed on. This is a really difficult 
thing to do to someone, whether you are a farmer or just an average 
American, to first have their home foreclosed on and then to hit them 
with an IRS bill for having their home foreclosed on. I was going to 
suggest we take that issue up on the farm bill because it happens to 
relate to a lot of farmers who are being foreclosed on.
  I was going to suggest we take up an amendment which might look at 
some of these new commodities that were put into this bill, such as the 
asparagus program and the camellia program and the chickpea program, 
but we do not want to hear about that. No, we do not want to address 
those issues.
  We do not want to address the issue of the fact that this bill has in 
it $10 billion--$10 billion--of gamesmanship on moving dates so they 
can make this bill look more affordable and less costly. They don't 
want to have an amendment on that which might make the bill honest on 
its face. They don't want to hear that amendment. They don't want to 
hear this amendment, which is sort of ironic.
  They have put in this bill what is called walking-around money--
walking-around money--for the farm States in this country, actually for 
five farm States, called a $5 billion disaster loan fund. The way we 
have always handled disaster loans for the farm community--and they 
have them, and they are legitimate--is we have simply passed an 
emergency bill around here to cover the disaster when the disaster 
occurs. But what this bill does is set up a new fund which will be a 
floor, essentially, which says there is $5 billion in this kitty 
sitting over here for which if there is a disaster, you take this money 
too. What is the practical implication of that? Every wind storm that 
occurs in North Dakota that blows over a mailbox is going to be 
declared a disaster so they can get some of this money. It is putting 
money on the table that is just going to be used up.
  We know we are going to fund disasters when they occur. Why would we 
prefund disasters in a way that is going to make it absolutely 
guaranteed that a disaster will occur, even if there is not a disaster? 
Well, we don't want to have an amendment which says: Let's take that 
disaster money and move it over to IDEA, special education. There is an 
account that needs some more money. There is an account which would 
give relief to a lot of families in this country, a lot of small towns 
in this country, farm communities and other communities that have a 
huge burden of IDEA in special education. Let's take that $5 billion 
out of that emergency account and, rather than having walking-around 
money for the five States that usually get this emergency money, use it 
for IDEA, which will benefit all the States in this country.
  They don't want to hear those amendments.
  It is incredible that on a bill of this size--one of the biggest 
bills we deal with as a Congress, one of the most important pieces of 
public policy we deal with--the other side of the aisle and the 
majority leader have specifically set up a procedure where amendments 
will not be tolerated--simply won't be tolerated. Totally 
inappropriate. I think basically what the other side of the aisle wants 
to do is kill this bill.
  Now, from my perspective, this is not a good bill, and I am going to 
be voting against it. But I know it is going to pass if it is given a 
legitimate shot at

[[Page S14360]]

passage because there are a lot of people around here who have these 
different commodities, and they all vote for each other, and, as a 
result, they build up enough votes to pass this bill. That is the way 
the farm bill always works. But that is no reason why we should not 
have a chance to debate it, to address some of these issues, such as 
baby doctors in rural communities and farm communities, such as the 
need for firefighters to have adequate bargaining rights, such as the 
need for people who are getting foreclosed on not getting hit with an 
IRS bill, such as the need to have proper accounting on this bill for 
what they are actually spending, such as the need for not setting up a 
$5 billion walking-around money fund, such as the need for the new 
commodities programs for asparagus, chickpeas, and camellia. We should 
have amendments to address all these issues. That is what the process 
of the Senate is all about. But it is being denied here. The result of 
that denial is that those of us who happen to believe the Senate should 
function as a place where things are amended and discussed and aired 
and heard are going to have to resist this bill. So the majority seems 
to want to kill this bill, which is unfortunate, because in the end, 
this bill should at least get a fair hearing.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. GREGG. Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina has 7\1/2\ 
minutes.

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