[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 185 (Wednesday, December 5, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14804-S14805]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE FARM BILL

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, for the past 5 weeks now, my colleagues 
and I have spent literally hours on the Senate floor talking about the 
2007 farm bill. Unfortunately, talking about the farm bill for over 5 
weeks is all we have done. We could have spent all the days and hours 
since November 5 productively debating this farm bill. Instead, the 
distinguished leader on the other side of the aisle made a decision the 
very first day of the farm bill debate when the farm bill was brought 
to the floor and the debate ensued to not allow any amendments to reach 
the floor. Not one single farm bill amendment has been discussed.
  Farm bill authority spans 5 years. This legislation impacts every 
man, woman, and child in America. My colleagues in the minority, who 
are not members of the Agriculture Committee and who have not had an 
opportunity to help craft this legislation, deserve a chance to offer 
their suggested changes.
  The farm bill before us totals 1,600 pages. It reauthorizes over $280 
billion in spending on commodity, conservation, nutrition, trade, 
energy, and rural development programs. This bill is far too important 
to be held hostage by partisan tactics. However, the majority leader 
made a decision, as I said, nearly 2 weeks ago, to prohibit amendments 
from being offered to this landmark legislation.
  I am a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and I am proud of 
the farm bill we passed out of the committee. I give Chairman Harkin 
and the ranking member, Senator Chambliss, great credit. I believe they 
deserve to be given great credit for the efforts they made in committee 
deliberation. The members of the committee held an open and productive 
debate. Several amendments were offered, debated, and voted on. At the 
end of the day, Senate Democrats and Republicans set aside their 
differences and reported out a bill to meet America's food and energy 
needs over the next 5 years.
  Is the committee-reported bill perfect? No, of course not. But that 
being said, my colleagues all deserve an opportunity to offer their 
amendments to the farm bill. There are only 21 of us who serve on the 
Senate Agriculture Committee, 11 Democrats, 10 Republicans. Senator 
Domenici, Senator Nelson, and I authored an amendment that would add an 
increased renewable fuels standard to the 2007 farm bill on the floor 
because it didn't get added in the committee and because there were 
questions about whether an energy bill was ultimately going to pass the 
Senate. Therefore, we thought it would be good to improve and 
strengthen the energy title of the farm bill by adding the RFS to the 
farm bill. That is one of the amendments that, of course, could be 
debated if, in fact, there were an open debate process.
  As I travel across my State and met with farmers and agricultural 
leaders, the message to me is very clear. No single policy is more 
important to our agricultural community than this farm bill and the 
accompanying Energy bill. If we can get a farm bill passed with a 
renewable fuel standard, I think our farmers would be very pleased with 
the work Congress has done to promote American agriculture and move the 
renewable fuels industry forward.
  This renewable fuels standard will create jobs in rural America, give 
our producers an alternative market for our crops, spur billions of 
dollars in renewable fuels investment, and save over $600 million in 
taxpayer dollars in the underlying bill.
  However, we have not had an opportunity to debate any of these 
amendments, including a renewable fuels standard amendment. I listened 
all day while accusations have flown back and forth. There has been all 
this hand wringing going on finger pointing, and the blame game being 
played. I have to say, as someone who voted for cloture the first time 
we had a cloture vote on the farm bill, I voted for cloture because I 
need this bill to move forward--my farmers and my ranchers want a new 
farm bill--but not because the process has been fair to Members on my 
side of the aisle.
  Senators on the minority side, on the Republican side of the aisle--
as I said, there are only 21 of us who serve on the Senate Agriculture 
Committee. That means there are 79 other Senators who would like to 
weigh in on this important legislation. We have had the bill on the 
floor literally for a 2-week period and we didn't debate or vote upon 
one single amendment.
  As I said before, you are talking about a 1,600-page bill that 
authorizes $280 billion in spending over the next 5 years, and there 
has not been one single amendment voted on. The majority leader decided 
when the bill came to the floor he was going to fill the amendment 
tree, which in effect said no amendment can be offered unless it is 
approved by the majority leader.
  I don't happen to disagree with the notion that amendments that are 
brought to the floor of the Senate ought to be somewhat germane to the 
underlying legislation. But it is a reality, a practical reality every 
single day in this institution, in the Senate, that amendments are 
brought to the floor that are not germane to the underlying bill. I 
will hold up a case in point because I have heard my colleagues on the 
other side get up and say: The Republicans want to offer all these 
nongermane amendments and what are we supposed to do about that, these 
need to be germane to the underlying farm bill? I would like to see 
amendments that are germane to the underlying farm bill, but it is a 
reality in the Senate that on many occasions--in fact it is often the 
case--amendments are offered to all kinds of legislation that are not 
germane to that underlying legislation.

  A case in point: We are now stalled on the Defense authorization 
bill, a bill that was debated and voted upon a long time ago. The House 
passed it, the Senate passed it, we went to conference, we resolved all 
the differences. I serve as a Member of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee, and I know some of the issues that were being debated in the 
conference were somewhat contentious, but they all got resolved. Most 
of them were related to the underlying bill. Most of them were related 
to our national security programs, our readiness and that sort of 
thing. What is holding up the conference on the Defense authorization 
bill is hate crimes legislation because hate crimes was put on the bill 
in the Senate before it left, over the objections of many of us who 
didn't feel it was relevant or germane to the underlying Defense 
authorization bill. But nevertheless we didn't have the votes. It went 
to conference.
  Now the debate over whether we are going to have a Defense 
authorization bill doesn't hinge on anything having to do with national 
security. It hinges on hate crimes legislation. How is that germane to 
the Defense authorization bill? Yet my colleagues on the other side 
have continually gotten up today and railed on the Republicans because 
Republicans, of all things, want a vote on a death tax amendment to the 
farm bill.

[[Page S14805]]

  In my State, most farmers and ranchers think the death tax is 
relevant to their everyday lives because it is probably the single 
biggest barrier to multigenerational transfers of cattle operations. 
There is not anything that is a bigger barrier, a larger impediment to 
those types of transfers in passing farm operations and ranching 
operations down to the next generation than is the death tax. In most 
cases, these are people who are asset rich but cash poor. Oftentimes, 
when someone dies and they wanted to pass it on, they have to liquidate 
all their assets in order to pay the death tax.
  My point simply is this. I would like to see us move forward. We need 
a farm bill. We need an energy bill. As I said before, I voted for 
cloture on the farm bill, but I have to say this process has been very 
tilted in favor of a procedure that the majority leader adopted on the 
first day that is very much without precedent--in terms of what happens 
on the Senate floor, I am sure it has been done. I am sure it has been 
done under Republican majorities. But the fact is, filling the 
amendment tree and prohibiting amendments from being offered, in a 
place such as the Senate which thrives on an open amendment process, I 
think is undermining the very foundation, the rules and procedures on 
which the Senate is based.
  I would like to see us be able to get to a vote on the farm bill, but 
we can't do that until we have some agreement on amendments, and we 
can't get to the amendments on the floor until such time as the 
majority leader agrees we will be able to offer amendments. Until that 
happens, our side is going to continue to object to proceeding to the 
farm bill because, in fairness to them, as I said, this is a 1,600-page 
bill that spends $280 billion over 5 years and was debated by 21 of the 
100 Senators. In the Agriculture Committee, I think we produced a very 
good bill. I would like to see it--as I said, if it went through 
unamended, that would be fine by me because I think we got as good a 
consensus in the farm committee as we could. But there are 79 other 
Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle who want to strengthen 
and make this bill better, and right now the process has precluded that 
opportunity to a point where we are at a standstill on legislation that 
is of great importance to the farmers I represent and, I would argue, 
to all Americans.
  The farm bill not only funds production agriculture--and frankly less 
and less of the overall funding in the farm bill is going to production 
agriculture. More of it now, 68 percent of it, is going to nutrition 
and food stamps and other aspects of the farm bill; 9 percent toward 
conservation. All of those are important. But my point simply is this 
is a bill important to all Americans, not just to those farmers and 
ranchers.
  During debate on the 2002 farm bill, there were 246 amendments filed. 
Democrats and Republicans came together and voted on 49 amendments, 
including 29 rollcall votes. Before that, in the 1996 farm bill, there 
were 339 amendments offered, which were debated. Republicans controlled 
the Congress at that time. Republican leadership allowed 26 amendment 
votes, including 11 rollcall votes.

  During consideration of the 1990 farm bill, there were 113 votes on 
the farm bill, 22 of which were rollcall votes. Finally, in 1985, there 
were 88 votes on that farm bill, 33 of which were rollcall votes.
  My point is, writing a farm bill is not an easy task. A lot goes into 
this. It is a lengthy process, involving compromise between stakeholder 
groups, national priorities, regional interests, and compromise is 
simply unachievable under the political maneuvers that have been 
employed by the Democratic leader on this farm bill.
  As I said before, it has been 5 weeks since it was called up on the 
floor. We had it on the floor for 2 weeks at one stretch before we went 
out for the Thanksgiving break, and let me emphasize we did not vote on 
one single amendment to this legislation.
  I hope that will change because I think there is precious little time 
left in this session of the Congress and there are a lot of priorities. 
There is not much, frankly, that has been done. The Defense 
authorization bill, as I said, is being held up over an unrelated, 
nongermane amendment dealing with hate crimes. We don't have funding 
going out to the troops. We have only gotten one appropriations bill 
signed into law. The VA-Military Construction appropriations bill is 
cued up, ready to go. The President said he would sign it. We have not 
moved that through here. The list goes on and on.
  I think it is regrettable because, as most Americans observe this 
process, they become increasingly cynical. The reason I think these 
public opinion polls that are published and surveys that are done 
indicate that Congress has terribly low approval ratings is for this 
reason: They see the partisan bickering, gridlock, finger pointing and 
all they want is for Congress to work together to get things done. One 
recent public opinion survey had the approval rating of the Congress at 
11 percent which, as our friend John McCain always says: When you get 
down to 11 percent, you are pretty much talking about paid staff and 
blood relatives; and if you factor in the margin of error, you might 
even run a negative on that.
  That is because the American public perceives what is happening and 
is incredibly frustrated by that. They want to see us work together 
toward solutions. We cannot do that absent a process and procedure that 
allows amendments to be offered when bills come to the floor. 
Legislation put on the floor that is as comprehensive as this farm bill 
is which, as I said, is 1,600 pages, $280 billion in spending over a 5-
year period, to date not one single amendment has been voted on.
  That is regrettable. It is a disservice to the farmers and ranchers 
of this country who are waiting for this farm bill but, as important, I 
think it is a disservice to the American public, all of whom benefit 
from the farm bill and all of whom want to see the Senate work and 
function effectively to address the challenges and the problems we face 
as a country.
  The process employed by the majority leader on the farm bill 
completely precludes us from having anything that resembles an open 
debate. As I pointed out earlier, if you go back to the 1985, 1990, 
1996 or 2002 farm bills, there were ample opportunities for amendments. 
There was vigorous and spirited debate and lots of rollcall votes. This 
is really historic in terms of the precedent it sets and the message it 
sends to American agriculture, which desperately needs a farm bill.
  I hope in the next day or two, and next week--which in my view is 
about what we have left to work with. I am frankly happy to stay here 
this weekend. I would stay here Saturday, Sunday, and beyond if we 
could get a farm bill on the floor, actually debate it, actually have 
amendments offered and voted on. I am happy to stay. I would be willing 
to bet that many of my colleagues would be happy to stay.
  But the clock is a-running, time is a-wasting. All the American 
people see is finger pointing and hand wringing and bickering and 
gridlock. That is not in their best interests. Certainly, it is not 
fair to them, the people by whom we were elected. They sent us to do a 
job. We need to get about that job. That means allowing the Senate to 
function, to work, to allow Senators to offer amendments to these bills 
and to get to final action and completion and to get some legislation 
passed that will hopefully improve the lives of many Americans.
  I yield the floor.

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