Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 190 (Wednesday, December 12, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 190 (Wednesday, December 12, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15179-S15218]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume conversation on H.R. 2419, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 2419) to provide for the continuation of
agricultural programs through fiscal year 2012, and for other
purposes.

Pending:

Harkin amendment No. 3500, in the nature of a substitute.
Harkin (for Dorgan-Grassley) modified amendment No. 3695
(to amendment No. 3500), to strengthen payment limitations
and direct the savings to increase funding for certain
programs.
Brown amendment No. 3819 (to amendment No. 3500), to
increase funding for critical farm bill programs and improve
crop insurance.
Klobuchar amendment No. 3810 (to amendment No. 3500), to
improve the adjusted gross income limitation and use the
savings to provide additional funding for certain programs
and reduce the Federal deficit.
Chambliss (for Cornyn) amendment No. 3687 (to amendment No.
3500), to prevent duplicative payments for agricultural
disaster assistance already covered by the Agricultural
Disaster Relief Trust Fund.
Chambliss (for Coburn) amendment No. 3807 (to amendment No.
3500), to ensure the priority of the farm bill remains
farmers by eliminating wasteful Department of Agriculture
spending on casinos, golf courses, junkets, cheese centers,
and aging barns.
Chambliss (for Coburn) amendment No.3530 (to amendment No.
3500), to limit the distribution to deceased individuals, and
estates of those individuals, of certain agricultural
payments.
Chambliss (for Coburn) amendment No. 3632 (to amendment No.
3500), to modify a provision relating to the Environmental
Quality Incentive Program.
Salazar amendment No. 3616 (to amendment No. 3500), to
amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives
for the production of all cellulosic biofuels.
Thune (for McConnell) amendment No. 3821 (to amendment No.
3500), to promote the nutritional health of school children,
with an offset.
Craig amendment No. 3640 (to amendment No. 3500), to
prohibit the involuntary acquisition of farmland and grazing
land by Federal, State, and local governments for parks, open
space, or similar purposes.
Thune (for Roberts-Brownback) amendment No. 3549 (to
amendment No. 3500), to modify a provision relating to
regulations.
Domenici amendment No. 3614 (to amendment No. 3500), to
reduce our Nation's dependency on foreign oil by investing in
clean, renewable, and alternative energy resources.
Thune (for Gregg) amendment No. 3674 (to amendment No.
3500), to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to exclude
charges of indebtedness on principal residences from gross
income.
Thune (for Gregg) amendment No. 3673 (to amendment No.
3500), to improve women's access to health care services in
rural areas and provide improved medical care by reducing the
excessive burden the liability system places on the delivery
of obstetrical and gynecological services.
Thune (for Gregg) amendment No. 3671 (to amendment No.
3500), to strike the section requiring the establishment of a
Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network.
Thune (for Gregg) amendment No. 3672 (to amendment No.
3500), to strike a provision relating to market loss
assistance for asparagus producers.
Thune (for Gregg) amendment No. 3822 (to amendment No.
3500), to provide nearly $1,000,000,000 in critical home
heating assistance to low-income families and senior citizens
for the 2007-2008 winter season and reduce the Federal
deficit by eliminating wasteful farm subsidies.
Thune (for Grassley/Kohl) amendment No. 3823 (to amendment
No. 3500), to provide for the review of agricultural mergers
and acquisitions by the Department of Justice.
Thune (for Sessions) amendment No. 3596 (to amendment No.
3500), to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to
establish a pilot program under which agricultural producers
may establish and contribute to tax-exempt farm savings
accounts in lieu of obtaining federally subsidized crop
insurance or noninsured crop assistance, to provide for
contributions to such accounts by the Secretary of
Agriculture, to specify the situations in which amounts may
be paid to producers from such accounts, and to limit the
total amount of such distributions to a producer during a
taxable year.
Thune (for Stevens) amendment No. 3569 (to amendment No.
3500), to make commercial fishermen eligible for certain
operating loans.
Thune (for Alexander) amendment No. 3551 (to amendment No.
3500), to increase funding for the Initiative for Future
Agriculture and Food Systems, with an offset.
Thune (for Alexander) amendment No. 3553 (to amendment No.
3500), to limit the tax credit for small wind energy property
expenditures to property placed in service in connection with
a farm or rural small business.
Thune (for Bond) amendment No. 3771 (to amendment No.
3500), to amend title 7, United States Code, to include
provisions relating to rulemaking.
Salazar (for Durbin) amendment No. 3539 (to amendment No.
3500), to provide a termination date for the conduct of
certain inspections and the issuance of certain regulations.
Tester amendment No. 3666 (to amendment No. 3500), to
modify the provision relating to unlawful practices under the
Packers and Stockyards Act.
Schumer amendment No. 3720 (to amendment No. 3500), to
improve crop insurance and use resulting savings to increase
funding for certain conservation programs.
Gregg amendment No. 3825 (to amendment No. 3673), to change
the enactment date.
Sanders amendment No. 3826 (to amendment No. 3822), to
provide for payments under subsections (a) through (e) of
section 2604 of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Act of
1981, and restore supplemental agricultural disaster
assistance from the Agricultural Disaster Relief Trust Fund.
Wyden amendment No. 3736 (to amendment No. 3500), to modify
a provision relating to bioenergy crop transition assistance.
Harkin-Kennedy Amendment 3830 (to amendment No. 3500),
relative to public safety officers.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 3671

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I wish to speak in support of a
provision in the bill that the amendment before us is going to strike,
the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network, which is included in the
underlying bill of the Agriculture Committee.
This network is a critical service to help American families,
particularly rural families. I oppose the amendment offered by the
senior Senator from New Hampshire that would strike this measure.
Without a doubt, farmers and ranchers face unique challenges in
providing food and fuel for this country. Farming is one of the most
stressful and dangerous occupations in the United States. There are
environmental, cultural, and economic factors that put farmers and
ranchers at a higher risk for mental health problems.
Stress in agriculture contributes to rates of depression and suicide
that are double the national average. This is true even in good times
for farmers. As a farmer myself, this troubles me.
It also concerns me when rural residents, especially those involved
in agriculture, are disproportionately represented among the uninsured
of the United States. One-third of the agricultural population lacks
health insurance coverage for behavioral health conditions. With the
rising cost of health care and many farmers and ranchers in business on
their own, the

[[Page S15180]]

cost of health care can be too much to handle.
We have a long way to go to make sure there is parity in our health
care system. Those suffering from mental health problems do not always
enjoy the same benefits of treatment because health coverage
discriminates against illness of the mind.
On top of the risk and cost to farmers and ranchers, access to
behavioral health care is more limited in rural areas. There are fewer
professional providers, and there is a stigma on this type of care,
especially among rural Americans. This is why the Farm and Ranch Stress
Assistance Network is needed. It is included in the farm bill because
we need to provide better mental health care for people in rural areas.
I will be the first to admit that things are looking good for
agriculture right now because prices, particularly of grain, are good.
We are developing and strengthening our safety net for producers. The
renewable energy progress that we have made has helped rural economies.
But just because that is a reality today does not mean that it will
continue forever.
Our farmers and ranchers will face challenges that are out of their
control. They will face instances of terrible weather and disaster.
They will see droughts and low prices. Good times do not last forever,
and that is when our farmers and ranchers will need the support that
this provision of the bill gives.
One of the most challenging factors that we farmers face is not being
able to predict outcome. We are forced to take risk. We face severe
consequences when we are wrong.
I remember the agriculture depression of the 1980s and what a toll it
took on farmers in my State. I wondered if things would be different if
the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network had existed prior to the
beginning of that depression.
This network may support a crisis telephone hotline that farmers can
access. Our rural residents and family farmers should have access to
confidential and highly trained professionals during these tough times.
The network could provide counseling services while working with
extension offices to reach farmers.
Finally, the Senator sponsoring the amendment should be aware that
this network is simply authorized in the underlying bill. We are not
adding mandatory money for the program. We are simply providing
authority to develop this network with dollars that may be appropriated
later on.
So this amendment will not save money. Rather, what the amendment
will do is do away with much needed support for those who work hard
every day to put food on our plates, fiber for our clothing, and fuel
for our economy.
So let's not eliminate this essential program without taking into
account the bad years that could lie ahead. I strongly urge my
colleagues to oppose the amendment.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. GRASSLEY. I have yielded back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes to
respond to the Senator from Iowa who referred to me in his comments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I find it extremely unique that the Senator
from Iowa would take the position that he needs a program to be
authorized but that we should not vote against it on the basis of it
spending money because he doesn't ever expect to fund it. That, on the
face of it, does not pass the laugh test. If you are authorizing a
program, creating a program, you expect at some point to fund the
program and spend money on the program. That is a totally disingenuous
argument, in my humble opinion, to make that representation.
I suggest if the Senator from Iowa believes the stress program is an
important program, that is fine. We will have a vote. I happen to think
the stress program is a reflection of a farm bill that has gone wild in
the area of spending money--American taxpayers' money. The American
taxpayers are the ones who are going to be under stress.
There are a lot of industries in this country that have stress. The
American farmer today is doing pretty well, as was acknowledged by the
Senator from Iowa. In fact, they had a 44-percent increase in farm
income just this last year. That is pretty good.
Stress may be there. I do not deny that farming is an intense and
difficult process. I used to work on a farm. There can be a lot of
stress in farming. But I don't think we need to set up a special
program with the Federal Government to create a network and a concept
for stress, and then we will authorize it, and then we will fund it.
This authorization is open ended, which means any amount of money can
be put in this bill in later years to fund it.
There are a lot of industries which have stress. We do not create a
stress program for the capital markets industry which today is
suffering from a meltdown. Are we going to have a stress program for
Bear Stearns? We don't create a stress program for all the companies in
this country that have basically been under stress by foreign
competition. Do we have a stress program for those? Do we have a stress
program for the person who runs the local restaurant? Do we have a
stress program for the person who runs a local gas station? All of
these are entrepreneurial undertakings, and entrepreneurship involves
stress, but we don't need to create a stress network to address it.
This is a creation of an earmark, pure and simple, in a bill filled
with earmarks. And it seems to me, adding a new program--remember,
there are 51 new discretionary programs put into this bill--51, and
this is just 1 of them.
I recognize the Senator from Iowa is totally committed to the
farmers, and there is probably nobody in this Congress who has done
more for the farm community than the Senator from Iowa--both Senators
from Iowa, but certainly the Republican Senator from Iowa has done an
immense amount.
This is a bridge too far; this is a farm tractor too far. The simple
fact is, we do not need a stress program for farmers, and we do not
need an authorization which is open ended and which will be funded.
There is no question, you do not put an authorization in unless it gets
funded.
I have serious reservations about this from, first, the concept of
creating the program and, second, the concept of funding the program. I
have expressed my reservation. I offered an amendment. We will vote on
it. I presume we will lose because we always lose these votes. But as a
practical matter, the American people should know this program, in my
humble opinion, is not of value and is inappropriate in this context.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk about
two amendments to the farm bill proposed by the Senator from New
Hampshire.
These amendments would have devastating impacts on farmers in my home
State of Washington, and I urge my colleagues to oppose both of them.
The first would strike the badly needed agriculture disaster
assistance trust fund and direct the money to other sources.
Under my colleague's amendment, most of that money would go to reduce
the deficit, and some would help low-income residents with their
heating bills.
The second would strike the Market Loss Assistance Program for
asparagus growers.
Our farmers are the backbone of our Nation. But farming is a
difficult business.
One bad storm can wipe out a whole crop or a whole herd--and take
your livelihood with it.
That is the position that some of the farmers in my home State are in
now. And that is why it is so important that we have a safety net ready
to help them.
Last week, I spoke on the Senate floor about the storms that had
devastated western Washington.
Winds and dangerous floods and mudslides washed out roads and homes
and cut off power to thousands.
Thousands of people are still coping with the damage, and our
agriculture producers in southwest Washington were hit especially hard.
We won't know the full impact of this storm for some time.

[[Page S15181]]

But we are already starting to hear reports about lost livestock,
poultry, farm buildings, and equipment.
Some reports say that producers lost thousands of animals--and that
number may still grow.
The agriculture disaster trust fund in this farm bill ensures that we
have a permanent pool of money to help farmers after natural disasters,
such as the storms in Washington State.
I appreciate the work of the Finance and Agriculture Committees to
add this important program. And I want to thank Senators Harkin and
Chambliss for their leadership on this bill.
I wish this program were already in place.
If it were, farmers in Lewis and Grays Harbor--two of the counties
hit hardest by the flooding--would be able to apply for Federal aid to
rebuild their herds.
For example, the Livestock Compensation Program in the trust fund
would pay 75 percent of the value of the dead animal.
Without a permanent disaster assistance program, we are left to
provide this kind of help on an ad hoc basis. A trust fund would ensure
that money is always there when it is needed.
Our farmers shouldn't have to depend on political whim when disaster
strikes.
And that is why the amendment to strike this fund would be such a bad
idea.
Now I strongly support the LIHEAP program. I think it is critical,
especially as we head into the winter months. But I think we can find a
better solution that doesn't eliminate this trust fund.
And so I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment by Senator
Gregg.
Secondly, I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the
amendment to strike the market loss help for asparagus growers, another
program that is vital in my home State.
Historically, asparagus has been a major crop for Washington State
farmers. In fact, it was the first crop harvested in Washington.
But our asparagus farmers are hurting now because of competition from
growers in Peru.
The Andean Trade Preference Act has allowed Peruvian asparagus to
flood the market.
And unlike most free-trade agreements, the act went into effect
without a transition period to allow U.S. producers to prepare or
adapt.
Over the Thanksgiving recess, I visited with a number of farmers in
Yakima, WA, who told me about the devastating impact this trade
agreement has had.
The numbers speak for themselves.
In 1990, the value of the crop was approximately $200 million. Its
value now is down to $75 million.
Before the act, more than 55 million pounds of asparagus were canned
in Washington State--roughly two-thirds of the industry. But by 2007,
all three asparagus canners in Washington had relocated to Peru.
I have fought to help our U.S. growers. I have tried to get them
trade adjustment assistance and other help.
And over the past several years, I have secured funding for research
on a mechanical harvester to make this labor-intensive crop less
expensive to produce.
And most recently, I worked with my colleagues from Michigan and
Washington to include the market loss program for asparagus growers in
this farm bill.
I appreciate the leadership of Senators Harkin and Chambliss on this
issue as well.
This program would provide up to $15 million nationwide to help U.S.
farmers who still grow asparagus despite foreign competition.
I hope this program will help growers in my State continue to invest
in asparagus.
We modeled this after a similar program for apples and onions, which
I helped add to the 2002 farm bill.
I remember hearing from apple growers about the effects of Chinese
imports on our markets.
That program provided over $94 million for our Nation's apple
growers, and it has proven to be a big help to our apple industry.
I would note to my colleague from New Hampshire that his State
received over $1 million from the apple program.
Striking the market loss program from the farm bill would be a step
in the wrong direction for our asparagus industry.
And it would have serious impacts on farmers in my home State.
So I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment as well.
``No'' votes on both of these amendments will support the struggling
asparagus industry.
And they will help our farmers and ranchers when disaster strikes.
These programs are too important to our farmers to be cut.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Gregg amendment
No. 3672.
This amendment irresponsibly strips $15 million in funding for an
asparagus market loss program to help asparagus producers who have lost
a significant amount of their market share because of the Andean Trade
Preference Act.
Thanks to the great work of Senator Stabenow, along with Senators
Harkin and Chambliss, the Senate Ag Committee approved this important
funding to help assist asparagus producers in California, Michigan, and
Washington who have lost significant market share as a result of the
Andean Trade Preference Act.
The U.S. asparagus industry was and continues to be hurt by the
Andean Trade Preference Act's, ATPA, extended duty-free status to
imports of fresh Peruvian asparagus. The ATPA eliminated U.S. tariffs
on Peruvian asparagus imports beginning in 1990.
Unlike most free-trade agreements, the ATPA provided no transition
period to allow domestic asparagus producers to prepare or adapt to a
market that would be flooded with an unlimited quantity of zero tariff
asparagus from Peru.
Following the enactment of ATPA, imports of processed asparagus
products surged 2400 percent from 500,000 pounds in 1990 to over 12
million pounds in 2006.
As a result, domestic asparagus acreage has dropped 54 percent from
90,000 acres in 1991 to under 49,000 acres today.
Michigan has lost 20 percent of its asparagus acreage.
Washington State's asparagus acreage decreased from 31,000 acres in
1991 to 9,300 acres in 2006, and producers in the State have seen the
value of their crop drop from $200 million in 1990 to $75 million
today.
And farmers in my State of California have lost nearly half of their
asparagus acreage since 1990, dropping from 36,000 acres before the
ATPA, to 22,500 acres today.
Many of my colleagues may be asking what the market loss program will
provide to asparagus producers. This asparagus program is modeled after
a 2002 program for onion and apple producers that provided $94 million
in assistance when the apple and onion markets were flooded with cheap
Chinese imports.
Market loss funds will be used to offset costs to domestic asparagus
producers to plant new acreage and invest in more efficient planting
and harvesting equipment.
I find it particularly interesting that Senator Gregg has put forward
an antimarket loss program amendment that would help farmers in my
State. As a result of the 2002 farm bill, apple producers in his State
of New Hampshire received more than $1 million in assistance.
Where was Senator Gregg and his amendment to strike when the Senate
approved a market loss program for apple and onion producers as part of
the 2002 farm bill?
I urge the Senate to reject this amendment.
The amount in funding for the market loss program is a small
percentage of the losses incurred as a result of the ATPA and will go a
long way toward maintaining domestic asparagus production and helping
our producers who have lost thousands of acres.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2
minutes of debate equally divided prior to a vote on amendment No.
3671, offered by the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Gregg.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, that is the stress program; correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. GREGG. I think we just had our 2 minutes of debate. I suggest
both sides yield back time and go to a vote.

[[Page S15182]]

The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
Mr. GREGG. I ask for the yeas and nays, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 3671. The clerk will
call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden),
the Senator from New York (Mrs. Clinton), the Senator from Connecticut
(Mr. Dodd), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily
absent.
Mr. LOTT. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Menendez). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 37, nays 58, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 418 Leg.]

YEAS--37

Alexander
Allard
Barrasso
Bayh
Bennett
Bond
Bunning
Burr
Coburn
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
DeMint
Dole
Ensign
Enzi
Graham
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Kyl
Lott
Lugar
Martinez
McConnell
Murkowski
Sessions
Shelby
Smith
Snowe
Sununu
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner

NAYS--58

Akaka
Baucus
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown
Brownback
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Chambliss
Cochran
Coleman
Conrad
Craig
Crapo
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Grassley
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
McCaskill
Menendez
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Roberts
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Specter
Stabenow
Stevens
Tester
Thune
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--5

Biden
Clinton
Dodd
McCain
Obama
The amendment (No. 3671) was rejected.

Amendment No. 3672

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2
minutes of debate equally divided prior to the vote on amendment No.
3672, offered by the Senator from New Hampshire. The Senator from
Michigan is recognized.
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I thank Senator Harkin and Senator
Chambliss and all those involved in putting together the bipartisan
farm bill. I ask for a ``no'' vote on the Gregg amendment. This would
eliminate $15 million, a small amount in the farm bill but incredibly
important to asparagus growers across the country. This would eliminate
the Asparagus Market Loss Program that would compensate American
asparagus growers across the country for losses to their industry as a
result of the Andean Trade Preferences Act that was passed back in
1990. Since that time, we have seen no transition period and imports of
tariff-free processed asparagus have surged 2,400 percent. We have seen
major losses for asparagus growers, and I add this was based on a
program passed in the last farm bill for apples and onions, where cheap
Chinese imports were harming domestic growers and, in fact, the State
of the author of the amendment received over $1 million in that program
for apples. We are simply asking that asparagus growers receive the
same kind of assistance.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this is a new program. It is a new
mandatory program. It is $15 million. It is not a lot of money but I
think it would be nice if the Senate would make a statement once in a
while it is going to be fiscally responsible.
This asparagus program is not needed. It is the result of a 1990s
trade agreement, the claim is made, but that is 20 years ago almost
that agreement was reached. What has happened is the American consumer
has benefited from that agreement and now, because the American
consumer has benefited from the agreement, we basically want to raise
taxes on the American consumer to make them pay because they didn't pay
at the shop when they bought the asparagus.
It makes no sense at all. This is a brand-new $15 million program in
this bill for asparagus. The bill is replete with these types of
programs. I think we ought to make a statement, at least for once, that
we are going to be fiscally responsible. I hope people will vote for
the amendment.
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a
sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden),
the Senator New York (Mrs. Clinton), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr.
Dodd), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily
absent.
Mr. LOTT. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 39, nays 56, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 419 Leg.]

YEAS--39

Alexander
Allard
Barrasso
Bayh
Bennett
Bond
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Coburn
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
DeMint
Dole
Domenici
Ensign
Enzi
Graham
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Kyl
Lott
Lugar
Martinez
McConnell
Murkowski
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Specter
Sununu
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner

NAYS--56

Akaka
Baucus
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Chambliss
Cochran
Coleman
Conrad
Craig
Crapo
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Grassley
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
McCaskill
Menendez
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Roberts
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Smith
Stabenow
Stevens
Tester
Thune
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--5

Biden
Clinton
Dodd
McCain
Obama
The amendment (No. 3672) was rejected.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and move to
lay that motion on the table
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. HARKIN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HARKIN. 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. HARKIN. Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The business before the Senate is Harkin
amendment No. 3830.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in consultation with the ranking member,
Senator Chambliss, I am going to repeat for the benefit of Senators a
unanimous consent that was entered into last night and try to clarify
it a little bit. There was one small change, and that was to add
Senator Sanders into this debate.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following disposition of
the Gregg amendment, which we just did, that Senator Harkin be
recognized to call up an amendment, and once reported by number, the
amendment be set aside; that Senators Alexander, Bingaman, Salazar, and
Sanders be recognized, 10 minutes for Senator Bingaman, 10 minutes for
Senator Salazar, 10 minutes for Senator Sanders, and 30 minutes for
Senator Alexander; that the Senate then debate the following amendments
for the time

[[Page S15183]]

limits specified under a previous order and in the order that is
listed.
First, it would be the Alexander amendments 3551 and 3553, 60 minutes
equally divided; the Gregg amendment No. 3673, 2 hours equally divided;
Dorgan-Grassley amendment No. 3695, 2 hours equally divided; Sessions
amendment No. 3596, 40 minutes equally divided; Klobuchar amendment No.
3810, 60 minutes equally divided; Coburn amendments 3807, 3530, and
3632, 90 minutes equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 3639 to Amendment No. 3500

(Purpose: To improve nutrition standards for foods and beverages sold
in schools)

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3639.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], for himself and Ms.
Murkowski, proposes an amendment numbered 3639 to amendment
No. 3500.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, under the previous unanimous consent
agreement, I ask that the amendment be laid aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The amendment is printed in the Record of Tuesday, November 13,
2007, under ``Text of Amendments.'')
Mr. HARKIN. Now we can go to the Alexander amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.

Amendment Nos. 3551 and 3553

Mr. ALEXANDER. I have up to 30 minutes to describe these two
amendments, and then other Senators have time, I assume, to oppose the
amendments. What I will do is--
Mr. SALAZAR. Will the Senator from Tennessee yield for a question?
Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I had understood that the order we were
following would be to consider Alexander amendment 3553 with 10 minutes
of debate time. If I can get 10 minutes before turning to the other
amendments. That is how I had come here to the floor to deal with the
issue of 3553.
Parliamentary inquiry: What is the order of continuing on 3553?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The understanding of the Chair on the order is
that there is an hour equally divided, of which 10 minutes is provided
for the Senator from Colorado, but no speaking order has been assigned.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, if I could ask my friend from Tennessee
to note the absence of a quorum for a minute so we might talk about how
we might move forward.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ALEXANDER. 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. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from Colorado and
Vermont.
I say to the Senator from Iowa, what I will do is I will use a few
minutes, maybe 5 or 10, summarizing the two amendments I have offered
which I talked some about yesterday. Then I will yield the floor and
sit down and allow the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from
Vermont to use their 10 minutes each. Then Senator Harkin may want to
use his 10 minutes. Then I will come back at the end. I probably will
not use all of my time.
Mr. President, I offer two amendments. They are at the desk. The
first one has to do with land grant university research funding, to try
to get back on track a terrific program the Congress passed in 1998 to
properly fund value-added research for our land grant universities
across this country. That is No. 1.
No. 2 is to amend the amendment of the Senator from Colorado, which
is a part of the bill, so that we would limit 100 kilowatt wind towers
to farm areas and not residential areas. Those are the two amendments.
I wish to begin by summarizing the land grant university research
amendment. What amendment 3551 does is it adds $74 million over the
last 3 years of the farm bill for agricultural research at land grant
colleges.
In my opinion, having been president of a land grant university, the
University of Tennessee, I believe our land grant colleges and
universities are our secret weapon in value-added products; in other
words, taking soybeans and turning them into milk and creating higher
incomes for farmers and more jobs in the United States.
Let me take an example, one which I used yesterday. Those who live in
the Southwest, which I do not, are apparently very familiar with the
guayule plant. I might call it a weed. That might not be a friendly
designation, but it looks like a weed to me. The University of Arizona
discovered--one of our land grant universities, as a part of the
program I am seeking to get back on track--that it could use this plant
to develop nonallergic latex to go into rubber gloves. Why is that
important? Because according to OSHA, allergic reactions from latex
rubber affect 10 percent of the Nation's health care workforce. So we
have not only helped health care through the land grant universities,
we have helped create incomes in the Southwest where this is grown. We
have helped grow jobs in the United States as well.
There are examples of that all through our country. That is why the
Congress, in 1998, created a program which is called the Future
Agriculture and Food Systems Program. That very simply did, through the
Department of Agriculture, which we do through many other parts of
government, grants of research offered to land grant universities in a
competitive way, not just doled out, not just pork, in a competitive
way to try to help them create value-added products.
The program has worked for a couple of years since 1998. It didn't
work so well in other years. I summarized that yesterday. The bottom
line is, both appropriators and authorizers during this time got away
from the idea of competitive, peer-reviewed grants and began to earmark
and designate their favorite universities for some of the money. Then
on another occasion in 2005, the Congress, looking for a way to bring
the budget under control, saw this as a pot of money that could be used
and took the money from agricultural research and used it to do a
better job of balancing the budget.
There was a 2-year period, in 2001 and 2002, when under this program
there were 183 grants to 71 of the 76 land grant universities, one in
every State. Out of that came this research and a variety of other
products.
The purpose of this amendment is to get this program back on track.
It was first authorized in 1998, had a couple of problems, but here is
what my amendment would do. My amendment would add $74 million in the
last 3 years of the farm bill. The House, in its version of the farm
bill, has added $600 million in those 3 years. So the conferees could
look at those two amounts of money and come to a reasonable adjustment
and get the program back on track, competitively awarded grants for
land grant colleges and universities, our secret weapon in raising farm
incomes.
How do we pay for it? The $47 million in funding over the last 3
years of the farm bill is fully offset by striking section 302 from the
tax title. I described that yesterday. I will be glad to describe it
again, if I need to. But it is fully funded.
Let me go to my second amendment, No. 3553. It affects the so-called
small wind tax credit. The small wind tax credit in the bill allows up
to $4,000 for someone to put a 100-kilowatt wind turbine in either a
farm or rural area or residential area. Since this is a farm bill and
not a residential bill, what my amendment would do is limit the ability
of this subsidy to go to wind turbines to farms and rural businesses as
defined in the Internal Revenue Code. If I could put it in plain
English: It will be very difficult for Members of the Senate to go home
and explain to their neighbors, whether they are in Tennessee or
Colorado or Mississippi, why they passed a law saying we are going to
take some of your tax money and give it to your neighbor so he or she
can put up a 12-story tower in his or her front yard next to you. I
don't think that is an appropriate use of our tax money. I don't
believe it is a wise way to create electricity. It doesn't show the
kind of common sense we need to show in creating clean energy.
The example I used yesterday, and which I could go into more detail
later, is the $5 million tax credit in this bill

[[Page S15184]]

for these kinds of towers would create only about 12 megawatts of
electricity. That is a pretty puny amount of electricity. Common sense
suggests it would be much wiser to use the $5 million to buy $2 energy-
efficient light bulbs and give them to people in residential areas.
That would save 8 times as much energy as these turbines would produce.
There are other reasons the turbines are not necessary. One is that
the wind industry is heavily subsidized already. For example, wind
energy will receive $11.5 billion over the next 10 years from the
production tax credit. By fiscal year 2009, the Federal tax subsidy for
wind energy will be the largest subsidy for energy which is an
astonishing figure when you take into account that wind provides
less than 1 percent of the electricity we use. According to the Energy
Information Administration, in the year 2020, it will provide not much
more than that. Here we have billions and billions already going to
subsidize wind power. That amount is half as much as all of the
subsidies for oil and gas, and it is totally disproportionate to the
value of the energy we get.

I stand as a Senator who is very concerned about clean air and
climate change. Since I arrived in 2003, I have had in place--first
with Senator Carper, then with Senator Lieberman--a climate change/
clean air bill that would put caps on utilities which produce one-third
of the carbon in the United States. That bill also included stricter
standards than now exist in law on mercury, on sulfur, and on nitrogen.
I was the sponsor in the last Congress of the solar tax credit which I
believe is important. In the hearing the other day we had on climate
change, I proposed and the committee adopted, a low-carbon fuel
standard. I voted for, and hope to be able to vote for again in final
passage of the Energy bill, the fuel efficiency standards which were in
the Senate-passed Energy bill.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has testified that is the single
most important thing we can do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
But I believe we should use common sense. I don't believe using tax
dollars to give your neighbor up to $4,000 so he or she can create up
to a 12-story tower in a residential neighborhood makes much common
sense. My appeal is as much to common sense as anything else.
My hope is the Senate would agree that it will be fine if we want to
subsidize the building of even such large wind turbines in rural areas,
but it is not all right to subsidize the building of those wind
turbines in residential areas. My amendment would also make clear that
nothing we did in this bill overrode local zoning ordinances that
people use to decide what sort of towers they want to permit.
That concludes my remarks. I will listen to my colleagues from
Vermont and Colorado.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise to speak against the Alexander
amendment No. 3553. I do so with some regret because he and I have
worked on so many matters together in a bipartisan spirit. But on this
particular amendment, he is simply wrong for two reasons. First and
foremost, the amendment would strike a blow against what we are trying
to do to create a new clean energy future by crippling our attempts to
move forward with a new agenda on wind power.
Second, it would bring the Congress into an intruding position on
matters that ought to be about land use at the local and State level,
in the traditions of this country. So for those two reasons, I am going
to ask my colleagues to join in opposition to the amendment.
The small wind power microturbine tax credit we are proposing as part
of the farm bill brought forward in a bipartisan way from the Finance
Committee is a provision that enjoys tremendous bipartisan support. On
the Republican side, Senators Smith, Craig, Murkowski, and Coleman have
all been champions of the small wind energy tax credit; on the
Democratic side, Senator Sanders, Dorgan, Feinstein, Kerry, Wyden,
Stabenow, and Johnson have all been supporters and cosponsors of the
underlying legislation, S. 673. That group of Senators shows the kind
of bipartisan support we have for small wind power in America.
I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a letter sent to
Senator Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley from a number of
organizations, including the Tennessee Environmental Council, in
support of this tax provision.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

November 8, 2007.
Hon. Max Baucus,
Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Dirksen Senate Office
Building, Washington, DC.
Hon. Charles Grassley,
Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Finance, Senate Office
Building, Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley: As
leading farm and rural economic development organizations, we
strongly support a federal investment tax incentive for small
wind systems. Small wind systems offer farmers and rural
Americans the ability to generate their own clean, fuel-free,
and reliable power for on-site use and provide independence
from unpredictable fossil fuel prices. We congratulate and
support the Senate Finance Committee on recently including an
incentive for small wind systems in the tax title of the 2007
Farm Bill.
There is currently no federal support for small wind
systems. However, solar photovoltaics, which compete in the
same market as small wind, receive a 30% investment tax
credit under current law. The Finance Committee Chairman's
Mark would provide for a 30% investment tax credit capped at
$4,000 per system to help provide on-site power for homes,
farms, and small businesses. Small wind systems are growing
in popularity as the cost of energy and concerns about global
warming continue to rise, but the high up-front cost of a
system is often prohibitive to consumers. An investment tax
credit would greatly help those who depend on small wind
systems for personal energy independence.
The provision included in the Senate Finance Committee
Chairman's Mark would cost only $5 million over 10 years, but
could spur 40% annual growth in the industry. Moreover, small
wind is an American-dominated industry--98% of the small wind
turbines sold in America last year were built by American
companies. That means that the jobs and economic growth
created by an investment tax credit will be overwhelmingly
American.
We look forward to supporting your efforts to help farmers
and rural Americans achieve personal energy independence.
Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
National Farmers Union.
American Corn Growers Association.
Nebraska Farmers Union.
Tennessee Environmental Council.
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
American Agriculture Movement.
Rocky Mountain Farmers Union.
Environmental Law & Policy Center.

Mr. SALAZAR. The Alexander amendment, the way it would strike out the
small wind tax credit provision of this legislation, would cripple the
wind power potential for our country in a way that is not healthy as we
embrace this agenda. We are dealing with technology that has been
around for a long time. Certainly, as we are moving forward with the
hope and vision that 25 percent of our energy from this country comes
from renewable energy resources, we know there are many components of
that portfolio. One of them is wind. Tremendous wind power is being
developed around our country, and I will speak about that. But we know
we can do much more with small wind microturbines. Here is what they
would look like on a farm.
This is a picture of a farm that shows an old-style windmill,
windmills such as we have seen out on the plains and the prairies for
generations. It used to be for many years the only way we could
generate power to pump water for cattle out on the range. These
windmills were converted over to become electrical generators. Now with
the new technology being developed at the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory through their wind technology center, we have developed new
wind microturbines that can produce a good amount of energy with very
small turbines in place. This picture shows some of those wind turbines
in operation.
The amendment of the Senator from Tennessee would essentially say we
are going to limit where we can allow these small wind microturbines to
go up. For example, if you happen to have a rural residence such as
this residence, which is typical of many places throughout the West,
this residence which could power its domestic electrical needs off of a
wind turbine in the way this house does would not be allowed to do
so. The $4,000 tax credit would not be allowed to provide the

[[Page S15185]]

electrical generation needs we want to accomplish for that house.

Another example is this rural residence which is out on a hillside.
The rural residents of this house, out on a hillside, would not be able
to take advantage of the tax credit we are providing in this
legislation.
It goes beyond just rural residences out there in the country. In
addition to that, when we think about industrial or business places of
use, this shown in this picture is an example of a Wal-Mart, which is
located outside of Denver, CO, in Aurora, CO, where Wal-Mart has
embraced using renewable energy to power much of its facility. One of
the sources for that wind power for this Wal-Mart in Aurora, CO, is a
wind turbine, a small wind microturbine.
Our legislation would provide the tax credit to allow this kind of a
wind microturbine to be incentivized to go into that place. So what my
friend attempts to do here, in my view, would unnecessarily narrow what
we are trying to do, which is to expand the places where we can use
wind power in the form of small wind-power turbines throughout the
United States. So I hope on that basis alone my friends in the Senate
will vote in opposition to his amendment.
Second, what we are trying to do here is incentivize the creation of
small wind-power turbines for the people and for the businesses of this
country. The amendment which my friend has proposed in part is based on
his concern that he does not want to see a lot of wind turbines in
urban or suburban areas. He does not want us to go back to places such
as Knoxville or Oak Ridge, TN, and go to those communities and say we
somehow are enabling those wind-power turbines, those small
microturbines, to go up in those communities. That has never been a
province of the Senate. The province of the Senate has been to set out
national policy. It is up to those local communities and cities and
counties and States to determine what their local land use policy is
going to be. Nothing we do in the Senate ultimately is going to disrupt
or interrupt whatever they may be doing at the local level in terms of
their local land use ordinances.
We have seen, most recently with respect to what has happened with
the South phone tower dispersion, is that throughout the country it is
still very much controlled by what happens at the local land use level.
I urge my friends to vote in opposition to Alexander amendment No.
3553.
I would finally say, on the whole concept of wind, on which we have a
genuine policy disagreement, there is indeed tremendous opportunity for
us to do much more with wind. In my State alone, 2 years ago, before we
passed the 2005 Energy Policy Act, there was almost zero electricity
being generated from wind power. Today, my State is on the verge of
producing 1,000 megawatts of power from our wind-power facilities that
have been constructed throughout the State. Now, 1,000 megawatts of
power may not seem like a lot to a lot of people, but I think it is a
lot. It is a lot for the State of Colorado. Mr. President, 1,000
megawatts of power is the equivalent of the amount of electrical power
that will be generated from three coal-fired powerplants--that is three
coal-fired powerplants. We are able to do that with our large wind-
power generators in my State.
We ought to be able to deploy the technology we have for small
microturbines to allow people who want these small microturbines to
generate the renewable electricity for their places of business.
I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on Alexander amendment No. 3553.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by concurring with much of
what Senator Salazar has said. I have a lot of respect for Senator
Alexander. I have worked with him on some issues, and I look forward to
working with him on other issues. But, unfortunately, on this one he is
dead wrong, and the amendments on wind energy he has brought forth
should be soundly defeated in a tripartisan vote.
Let me begin by quoting from an AP article that appeared on the front
page of Vermont's largest newspaper, the Burlington Free Press, this
morning and in papers throughout the country. Here is what the article
says: ``Ominous Arctic melt worries experts.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Ominous Arctic Melt Worries Experts

(By Seth Borenstein)

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly
accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists
worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping
point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone
in five years.
Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more
than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice
at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier,
according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The
Associated Press.
``The Arctic is screaming,'' said Mark Serreze, senior
scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in
Boulder, Colo.
Just last year, two top scientists surprised their
colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting
so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of
2040.
This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate
scientist Jay Zwally said: ``At this rate, the Arctic Ocean
cold be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much
faster than previous predictions.''
So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves
these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic
in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has
everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond
the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?
``The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine
for climate warming,'' said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled
coal. ``Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has
died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.''
It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that
produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases,
responsible for man-made global warming. For the past several
days, government diplomats have been debating in Bali,
Indonesia, the outlines of a new climate treaty calling for
tougher limits on these gases.
What happens in the Arctic has implications for the rest of
the world. Faster melting there means eventual sea level rise
and more immediate changes in winter weather because of less
sea ice.
In the United States, a weakened Arctic blast moving south
to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean
less rain and snow in some areas, including the drought-
stricken Southeast, said Michael MacCracken, a former federal
climate scientist who now heads the nonprofit Climate
Institute. Some regions, like Colorado, would likely get
extra rain or snow.
More than 18 scientists told the AP that they were
surprised by the level of ice melt this year.
``I don't pay much attention to one year... but this year
the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice,
that you've got to stop and say, `What is going on here?' You
can't look away from what's happening here,'' said Waleed
Abdalati, NASA's chief of cyrospheric sciences. ``This is
going to be a watershed year.''
2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following
ways:
552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the
Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data
to be released by NASA Wednesday. That's 15 percent more than
the annual average summer melt, beating 2005's record.
A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this
year, 12 percent more than the previous worst year, 2005,
according to data the University of Colorado released Monday.
That's nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years
ago. It's an amount of water that could cover Washington,
D.C., a half-mile deep, researchers calculated.
The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic
Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous
record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife,
with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in
October for the first time in recorded history. Another
first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.
Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining
Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That
makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the
shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of
the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall
volume of ice is half of 2004's total.
Alaska's frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing
yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen
soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007,
according to measurements from the University of Alaska.
While that may not sound like much, ``it's very
significant,'' said University of Alaska professor Vladimir
Romanovsky.

[[Page S15186]]

Surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean this summer were
the highest in 77 years of record-keeping, with some places 8
degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to research to be
released Wednesday by University of Washington's Michael
Steele.
Greenland, in particular, is a significant bellwether. Most
of its surface is covered by ice. If it completely melted--
something key scientists think would likely take centuries,
not decades--it could add more than 22 feet to the world's
sea level.
However, for nearly the past 30 years, the data pattern of
its ice sheet melt has zigzagged. A bad year, like 2005,
would be followed by a couple of lesser years.
According to that pattern, 2007 shouldn't have been a major
melt year, but it was, said Konrad Steffen, of the University
of Colorado, which gathered the latest data.
``I'm quite concerned,'' he said. ``Now I look at 2008.
Will it be even warmer than the past year?''
Other new data, from a NASA satellite, measures ice volume.
NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke, reviewing it and other
Greenland numbers, concluded: ``We are quite likely entering
a new regime.''
Melting of sea ice and Greenland's ice sheets also alarms
scientists because they become part of a troubling spiral.
White sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun's heat
off Earth, NASA's Zwally said. When there is no sea ice,
about 90 percent of the heat goes into the ocean which then
warms everything else up. Warmer oceans then lead to more
melting.
``That feedback is the key to why the models predict that
the Arctic warming is going to be faster,'' Zwally said.
``It's getting even worse than the models predicted.''
NASA scientist James Hansen, the lone-wolf researcher often
called the godfather of global warming, on Thursday was to
tell scientists and others at the American Geophysical Union
scientific in San Francisco that in some ways Earth has hit
one of his so-called tipping points, based on Greenland melt
data.
``We have passed that and some other tipping points in the
way that I will define them,'' Hansen said in an e-mail. ``We
have not passed a point of no return. We can still roll
things back in time--but it is going to require a quick turn
in direction.''
Last year, Cecilia Bitz at the University of Washington and
Marika Holland at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Colorado startled their colleagues when they
predicted an Arctic free of sea ice in just a few decades.
Both say they are surprised by the dramatic melt of 2007.
Bitz, unlike others at NASA, believes that ``next year
we'll be back to normal, but we'll be seeing big anomalies
again, occurring more frequently in the future.'' And that
normal, she said, is still a ``relentless decline'' in ice.

Mr. SANDERS. In other words, what the scientists are telling us is
the problem of global warming may be even more severe than they had
previously told us. It seems to me what we should be doing in the
Senate is become more aggressive, more bold in combating greenhouse gas
emissions and not support amendments that slow down the growth of such
sustainable energies as wind. That is what, unfortunately, the
Alexander amendment would do.
In contrast to the direction Senator Alexander wants us to go, let me
quote from a BBC article that appeared the other day. This is what that
article says:
Wind ``could power all UK homes.'' All UK homes could be powered by
offshore wind farms by 2020 as part of the fight against climate
change, under plans unveiled.''
What they are doing in the UK, at the highest levels of Government,
with support of the Tory Party--the conservative party--in the UK, is
they are developing plans that would significantly increase the number
of wind turbines. Some 7,000 wind turbines could be installed by the
year 2020 to provide all the homes in the UK with electricity. They are
going forward rapidly, boldly with wind, and we are talking about how
we can cut back efforts toward sustainable energy.
I fully appreciate that my good friend from Tennessee has concerns
about wind energy. He may not want a wind turbine at his home or on his
property, and that is his right. We support that right. But I would
respectfully request he not make that decision for the rest of America.
Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable technologies
today and benefits families in my own State of Vermont and all across
our country. I believe rural America and individual communities across
this country deserve the opportunity to decide for themselves whether
to pursue wind energy. Some may like it; some may not. That is a
decision for them and not the Federal Government. I would hope some of
our conservative friends who talk about all of the vices of a big
Federal Government might want to heed that thought.
The truth is, today millions of rural Americans, in fact, want to
pursue sustainable energy. They should be allowed to do so, and they
should be able to utilize the support provisions in this farm bill that
provide incentives for them to produce electricity that is renewable,
that is cost effective, and does not emit carbon. That is what they
want to do. That is what we need. We should support that effort.
Apparently, one of those people--and I applaud him for this--is the
former Republican President of the United States of America, George
H.W. Bush, who, in his summer home at Kennebunkport, ME, has recently
installed a 33-foot tall windmill that can produce 400 kilowatts a
month. I applaud former President Bush for pointing out to the country
the importance of small wind turbines in providing electricity for
homes. I hope all over this country people emulate what the former
Republican President has done.
There is enormous potential for wind technology in the United States.
We have a huge renewable resource base in our country, and yet only
about 3 percent of the Nation's electricity supply came from
nonhydroelectric renewable energy sources in the year 2006.
Other countries have already made significant strides toward using
renewable energy. I point out that Denmark meets roughly 20 percent of
its electricity needs with wind alone, while Spain is at 9 percent, and
Germany and Portugal are at 7 percent. Despite having a much more
robust wind resource than any of these countries, the United States
meets less than 1 percent of its electrical needs with wind power
today.
We can do better. We must do better. The Federal Government, through
tax credits and other incentives, including small wind turbines, must
help move our country in that direction.
Today, most wind turbines are currently located on mountain tops,
mountain passes, and the Great Plains from North Dakota to Texas. That
is not nearly good enough. Wind is the cheapest renewable energy, and
it should be growing by leaps and bounds. We have to move forward in
making that happen.
As a nation, we can--in fact, we must--do a better job of exploiting
the freely available renewable resources that exist across our country.
Small-scale rural wind turbines should be aggressively promoted as one
of the solutions. We can no longer afford to ignore the rapidly
maturing renewable technologies that can help address the critical
challenges of energy independence, global warming, and high energy
prices.
It should be heartening to know that new investments in renewable
generating capacity in the United States has been accelerating in
recent years. This is largely due to tax credits from States and the
Federal Government. Wind power has been at the forefront of that
growth. The year 2006 was the largest on record in the U.S. for wind
power capacity additions, with over 2,400 megawatts of wind added to
the grid. That is a good start, but we need to go a lot further than
that.
I recently talked with a manufacturer of small residential-scale wind
turbines to find out about the potential of this technology. What he
told me was that with support from the U.S. Department of Energy's
National Renewable Energy Laboratory we are developing wind turbines
all over this country where there is a reasonable amount of wind.
Clearly, wind is not available all over the country. But everybody who
is serious about this issue understands that the solution to global
warming and the solution to sustainable energy, electricity generation,
is going to require a mix of technologies. In some areas wind is
strong, in some areas the Sun is strong, and so forth.
But in areas such as the State of Vermont, I am told that an average
home can produce 40, 50, 60 percent of its electricity from a small
wind turbine, which is becoming less and less expensive. They are now
on the market for some $12,000--$12,000--including installation. If we
can provide the type of tax credits and other incentives for these wind
turbines, we can have a payback period in a reasonable period of time
which will lower the cost of electricity for millions of Americans,
break our dependency on Middle East oil, and stop the emissions of
carbon

[[Page S15187]]

into the atmosphere, which is causing global warming.
I have a lot of respect for my friend from Tennessee, and I know his
concern is aesthetics, how these things look--that is one of his
concerns--but let me say a word about aesthetics. I also am concerned
about how things look. I am concerned when extreme weather disturbances
such as Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and caused massive damage. That
is an aesthetic concern I have. If we do not get a handle on global
warming, we are going to see more and more extreme weather disturbances
which can impact hundreds of millions if not billions of people.
Drought is an aesthetic issue. Seeing lakes dry up, and the
repercussions of that, of flooding, and the impact that global warming
will have on the loss of clean drinking water, and the desperation
people will experience as a result of that, is also an aesthetic issue.
So I can understand that people have differences of opinion about how
things look. I do not like the look of global warming, and I think we
should reject soundly Senator Alexander's amendment.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Sixteen minutes.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I will take just a few of those, unless the Senator
from Iowa wishes to speak now.
I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Colorado, and I know
the Senator from Vermont as well has strong and deeply held views on
this subject. So do I. I would only respond in these ways: I don't
think it is necessary to destroy the environment in order to save the
environment. I think there are more sensible ways to save the
environment than to use tax dollars to encourage people to put up 12-
story white towers of red lights in their own neighborhoods.
There is some talk about Congress interfering with land use. Well,
what happens here is that when the Congress gives out tax money--my tax
money, your tax money--and says you can use it for this purpose, people
do it. So the Congress is distorting land use decisions, in effect. So
it is the other side that is interfering with local land use decisions.
Maybe we have different conceptions of what the word ``small'' means.
A 100-kilowatt tower is--can be 12 stories high. So we are not talking
about your grandmother's windmill that snuggles up cozily next to the
barn; we are talking about your neighbor in New Jersey or Tennessee or
Vermont who comes in and says: Hey, I have a great idea. I am going to
put up a 12-story tower in my front yard with your tax money. Now, if
that person wants to do that and local ordinances permit that, then
that is not the business of the Federal Government. We don't need to be
encouraging it in residential areas. All I am saying is this is a farm
bill, and what I am trying to say is we should limit these subsidies to
rural areas.
The Senator from Colorado said this would be a crippling blow to the
wind effort. I believe that suggestion, if I may respectfully say, is
overblown. The biggest--through the renewable electricity production
tax credit alone, the U.S. taxpayer will spend $11.5 billion on wind
energy over 10 years, between 2007 and 2016. This doesn't begin to
count other Federal, State, or local subsidies for wind. So without
this subsidy, we are spending $11.5 billion for wind.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, by the year 2009 this
wind subsidy and the production tax credit that is already in the law
will be the single largest Federal tax expenditure for energy in the
United States. Yet it only produces seven-tenths of 1 percent of the
electricity we use. To put it in a little perspective--and I mentioned
this yesterday--according to the same Joint Tax Committee, all the
subsidies we give to oil and gas through taxes, according to the Joint
Tax Committee, are $2.7 billion in the year 2009. The wind subsidies
are $1.3 billion. Well, we use oil and gas. We use about 25 percent of
all of the oil and gas in the world in this great big economy of ours.
We don't use much of it to make electricity, but we have a $2.7 billion
taxpayer investment in that, and that is debated here. But nobody seems
to notice that we are spending $1.3 billion--nearly half as much--on
these large wind turbines, and they are not producing much power--not
much power at all.
Just so everyone understands, half of our electricity is produced by
coal. Eighty percent of our carbon-free electricity is produced by
nuclear power. I didn't hear my friends on the other side say a word
about nuclear power.
Climate change is an inconvenient truth, Al Gore said. I am not one
of those who believe that just because Al Gore said it means it is
wrong. I believe climate change is a very serious problem for our
country and our world. I am working hard to change that through low
carbon fuel standards, through putting caps on utilities, and through
sponsoring solar energy. But why would we make such an extraordinarily
disproportionate investment in wind turbines when they produce so
little energy and, according to the Energy Administration, are likely
to produce so little?
So the only other points I would make are these: The Senator from
Vermont mentioned the relentless melting of the Arctic. We agree. We
need to deal with climate change. But I would suggest that conservation
and nuclear power are the way to deal with climate change in this
generation. That may be an inconvenient truth as well, but that is the
way to do it.
As I mentioned earlier, just spending the $5 million that is
allocated for these big residential wind turbines and farm wind
turbines, just spending that on efficiency lightbulbs would save eight
times as much energy. That would make more common sense to me.
The Senator from Vermont also pointed out that the UK--the United
Kingdom--might power all of its houses with wind power. I read that
article too; I believe it is the same article. But they are planning to
do that with large wind turbines way out in the ocean where you won't
be able to see them very easily. If they do have all of their power
from wind power, I don't think I would want to live there because my
computer and my lights and my air-conditioner and my heater would only
work when the wind blows. Wind can't be stored in any effective way
today, so it only works when the wind blows. It is not possible for it
to be used as a base power of electricity. It is not a good peaking
power.
So what we are doing with these extraordinary subsidies for wind is
we are encouraging people to build large wind turbines in areas where
the wind doesn't blow just so they can make some money on it because of
all of these huge generous subsidies, and we are deluding ourselves
into thinking we are dealing with climate change when, in fact, we are
ignoring the real solutions to climate change, which are conservation,
No. 1, and--in this generation, at least--nuclear power, No. 2.
So that is my reason for making this amendment. This is a farm bill.
If we are going to subsidize wind turbines in the farm bill, let's do
it on farms. Let's not take my tax money and your tax money and give it
to your neighbor and say: You can put up a 12-story white tower next
door, and we would like to encourage you to do that in your residential
neighborhood. I don't think that makes common sense. Once it starts
happening, neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood, I think
a lot of taxpayers are going to be calling their U.S. Senator and
saying: You did what? You did what? Why didn't you vote for
conservation support? Why didn't you vote to have clean coal
technology? Why didn't you vote to build more nuclear powerplants,
which are the real way to do carbon-free energy? Why are you pretending
to solve climate change by putting up 12-story towers or encouraging
them to be put up in my neighbor's front yard?
So I hope my colleagues will recognize that the wiser vote today is
for the Alexander amendment because that will make possible new
subsidies, in addition to all of the other subsidies, for wind turbines
in rural areas. They call them small, but they are up to 12 stories
tall. It will make it clear that there is no interference with local
land use rules about what kind of towers may go up and down.
Of course, the other amendment I proposed would help get the research
programs back on track at our land grant universities which have been
so valuable in helping raise farm incomes and creating jobs in this
country.

[[Page S15188]]

I thank the President, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me speak briefly in opposition to
one of the amendments the Senator from Tennessee has offered. It is
amendment No. 3551.
I think one of the most important things we can do in order to
encourage development of renewable resources is to encourage
construction of power lines to bring the power from where it is
produced to where it is needed. Many of the best areas for development
of wind and solar power are in remote parts of our country. That is in
the upper midwest Plains States or in the desert southwest in
particular. Lack of transmission from these remote locations is
seriously hampering the great potential for the generation of
electricity from these resources.
Power lines to such places are expensive and often face local
opposition from landowners and residents across whose lands the lines
have to be built. The farm bill, section 12302, attempts to address the
problem by creating a tax incentive to encourage farmers and ranchers
and landowners to allow transmission lines to be built across their
property. Landowners receive a payment whenever they agree to the
siting of a transmission tower on their land, and these payments are
currently taxable. Section 12302 would make those payments tax exempt
if the power that is carried on the lines comes primarily from a
renewable generator that is eligible for the renewable production tax
credit. Senator Alexander's amendment here would strike that section.
The cost of that section, as I have been advised, is $91 million over 5
years--a little less than $20 million per year.
It is clear from reports of the Western Governors' Association and
many others that we are going to need substantial construction of new
transmission lines throughout the West in the next several years if we
are going to increase use of renewable energy. Transmission lines have
more benefit than just to the generator. They enhance the reliability
of the transmission system. They help break bottlenecks that make
generation more expensive than it needs to be. They also can enhance
local economies by opening areas that have been closed to development.
My own view is that this tax exemption would help to encourage farmers
and ranchers to seriously consider the siting of transmission lines in
locations where it makes sense.
Senator Alexander argues that wind power receives enormous subsidies
under current law and under the Energy bill that is being debated. It
is difficult, of course, to look into the future, but if you look at
the last 5 years, according to a GAO report issued this year, the
Department of Energy received $11.5 billion in funding for electricity-
related research and development, and $6.2 billion of that went to fund
nuclear power research and development and $3.1 billion went to fund
fossil fuel generation. Mr. President, $1.4 billion went to all
renewables--not just wind but all renewables combined. GAO also
estimates that during that same period, fossil fuels received about
$13.7 billion in tax expenditures, and renewables, about $2.8 billion.
When new nuclear power facilities are built--and there are some now on
the verge of being built--they will receive very generous tax credits
as well under current law. I have supported those tax credits.
I believe, as the Senator from Tennessee said, that nuclear power is
an essential part of the solution to global warming and a central part
of the solution to our future energy needs, but I believe alternative
renewable power also fits in that category. For decades now, fossil
fuel generation and nuclear power have received the lion's share of
Federal support. If renewables are to take their rightful place in the
market, we need to be providing support to them on an equal footing. I
believe that an exemption extended to farmers and ranchers, who deserve
adequate compensation when their land is used, is good public policy.
I know the Senator from Tennessee is proposing that the funds
involved here would be shifted over to a land grant research program
that Senator Alexander wants to fund. That is a good program. I
understand the managers of the bill are working on funding for this
program to be included in--increased funding for this program to be
included in the managers' amendment. I would argue that there are
better places to look for paying for that program than from the
incentives for farmers and ranchers to engage in such a worthwhile
purpose. So I would urge a ``no'' vote on that amendment by the Senator
from Tennessee.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time to the Senator from Idaho?
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to conclude my remarks, if
that would be all right.
Mr. CRAIG. May I ask how much time remains in opposition to the
Alexander amendment?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico controls 4
minutes. The Senator from Colorado controls 1 minute.
Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, just a few remarks.
I appreciate the comments of the Senator, who is chairman of the
Energy Committee, and I appreciate his support for nuclear power, which
is 80 percent of our carbon-free electricity in America even though it
is only 20 percent of our electricity.
I will discuss briefly his point on my amendment that would seek to
restore funding to the program for land grant universities. If the
managers are able to find some extra money, that would be terrific, but
it ought to be in addition to the $74 million I have proposed. The
House proposes to spend $600 million over the last 3 years in the farm
bill. I am proposing to spend $74 million.
Second, one of the problems with the section I am seeking to strike
is that it appears to apply retroactively to transmission towers. I see
no reason for that. A larger problem is that wind doesn't need more
subsidies. The Senator talked about subsidies to other forms of energy
for research and development. I have yet to hear anybody contradict the
fact that the taxpayer, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation,
will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years, which
today produces less than 1 percent of our electricity, and only when
the winds blows.
Even if you have wind turbines all over America, you still need
nuclear plants, conservation, coal plants, and a base load of
electricity. There is a long list of Federal subsidies for wind energy
and, in addition, clean, renewable energy bonds, the Department of
Defense energy incentive program, et cetera, including State programs.
What is happening is that we are encouraging people to build wind
turbines, as they have on Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee, in places
where the wind doesn't blow, just to make the money the Federal
Government provides in subsidies.
Finally, I think the greatest, most specific argument against the
idea of giving tax breaks to landowners, where you are going to build
new transmission lines, is this: This would mean the Tennessee taxpayer
would be taxed to pay for transmission lines in New Mexico or South
Dakota, or the Georgia taxpayer would be taxed to pay for transmission
lines in Pennsylvania or Virginia. Transmission lines should be paid
for by the utility that builds them and the ratepayer who benefits from
that, not by the general taxpayers. So if all of the other reasons go
to the side, the major reason in support of this amendment is that it
is inappropriate for us to require taxpayers in Maryland, Tennessee,
and Texas to pay for utilities' transmission lines in New Mexico, South
Dakota, and Illinois. They should pay for them themselves.
Mr. President, that concludes my remarks.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Idaho is
recognized.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
5 minutes in opposition to the Alexander amendment.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, how much
time remains, or how much time does the Senator from Iowa have on this
amendment?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Five minutes remains in opposition.

[[Page S15189]]

Mr. HARKIN. How much time does Senator Bingaman have?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. That includes his time.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield that time to the Senator from
Idaho.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Idaho is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, it is rare that I disagree with my friend
from Tennessee, especially on energy issues. We are very much in
concert on how we not only deal with climate change, in many instances,
but how we build a full energy portfolio for our country that makes us
increasingly independent of foreign nations and oil-producing nations.
One of the ways to do it, in my opinion, is to promote all sources of
energy. While there are wind turbines going up in Idaho and in
locations that I don't necessarily care for, I have very much supported
wind, I will continue to support wind, and I support small wind. I say
that in respect to the provision within the bill and in opposition to
what the Senator from Tennessee is trying to do. Not only is it
important that we produce as much as we possibly can because, clearly,
our Nation is rapidly growing in deficit as it relates to energy
production in nearly all segments. I agree you don't produce
electricity when the wind doesn't blow; but when it does, you do.
I will give you an example of a small company in Idaho that a few
years ago, with little Federal assistance, built an obscure building
out on the high deserts of Idaho, tapped underground water and brought
in some electrolysis equipment, put up small wind turbines, exactly the
kind the Senator from Tennessee is talking about. Those turbines
produce 25 percent of their electrical needs. When you add that 25
percent wind turbine capability to their online use of electricity,
they produce hydrogen in a profitable way that users of hydrogen in the
Boise Valley are no longer trucking it in from Seattle, WA. They simply
pull their truck out to the hydrogen facility and leave it there to be
filled by this small hydrogen-producing company that uses electrolysis
machines that are literally off the shelf, that are already being made
and built into small business America. What made the difference for
that company, what made it profitable, was to gain 25 percent of its
energy base from wind, with the small turbine he is talking about.
If you don't want a wind turbine in your front yard in an urban area,
planning and zoning will take care of that. That is a local decision to
be made. If you don't want them in certain places in your State, then
whether it is county planning and zoning or municipal planning and
zoning, that, too, can take care of it.
America is rapidly adjusting to where the wind isn't and where the
wind is. Wind isn't everywhere, but in certain segments of the Midwest,
upper Midwest, and the West there are wind troughs, if you will, where
the wind blows in a sustained way to make wind turbine generation
profitable, adding to our overall energy base. I hope we will oppose
the Alexander amendment.
Along with many others, I have changed my mind over the years in
rapidly encouraging all kinds of clean energy production. Wind
certainly is clean, hydro is clean, and photovoltaic is clean. We need
all of the rest, but we need to get increasingly a cleaner energy
portfolio. Wind assists us in doing that. It is not the cure-all. And I
agree with the Senator from Tennessee that nuclear, without question,
is the base-loading generation capability that is clean, that is in our
current technology base that, thank goodness, America has awakened to
and we are beginning to see that happening. We are seeing the licensing
of new nuclear reactors and we will be able, within the decade, to see
multiple reactors coming on line to produce large volumes of energy.
But there is no doubt that conservation, supplementation by wind, and
all other sources remain important pieces of that total package.

I oppose the Alexander amendment. I hope we can support small wind
development along with large wind development. Is it pricey? Yes, it
is; it is not inexpensive. I believe right now we are spending upward
of a billion dollars a day offshore to foreign nations to buy their
oil. The more money we can keep onshore for America, American
enterprises, and the consumer, we ought to be doing. This is one way to
do it.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
Who yields time?
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The sponsor has 2\1/2\ minutes.
Mr. ALEXANDER. We yield back our time.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. All time is yielded back.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee and all
the Senators speaking on that amendment, for or against it.
Under the unanimous subsequent request, we will turn to the Gregg
amendment No. 3673. There will be 2 hours evenly divided. I say to the
Senators, if you are opposed or for the Gregg amendment No. 3673, which
would cap noneconomic damages in OB/GYN medical malpractice lawsuits,
if Senators want to speak on that, we are on it now, with 2 hours
evenly divided. Hopefully, we can reduce that time. I ask Senators to
please come to the floor if they want to speak.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Who yields time?
The Senator from New Hampshire is recognized.

Amendment No. 3673

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the chairman
of the Agriculture Committee. I will speak on our amendment dealing
with how we get more doctors to be able to care for women in rural
communities. We have a real crisis in rural America today. There is a
significant shortage of doctors who deliver babies. This is purely a
function of one fact, and that is that the trial lawyer bar has been so
aggressive in pursuing doctors who deliver babies with lawsuits, they
have essentially created a cost of liability insurance for doctors who
deliver babies--OB/GYNs--that is so high that a doctor practicing in a
rural community who is there to help women having children, deliver
those babies safely, that type of doctor cannot make ends meet. That
sounds unusual, but that is a fact.
In order for a doctor to generate enough income to simply pay the
liability insurance, which is generated by the large number of lawsuits
filed against doctors in this country by the trial bar, it is necessary
for an OB/GYN--a doctor who delivers babies--to have a very large
basically urban or suburban clientele. When you get into rural America
and you don't have a lot of people per square mile, where you have
people who work on farms and those farms take up a fair amount of
acreage, then you don't have the population base necessary for these
doctors to practice and generate enough income to pay the liability
insurance.
What we are proposing in this amendment is a very narrow proposal. It
doesn't say that doctors who are incompetent, or doctors who,
unfortunately, make a mistake won't be sued. It doesn't say that at
all. It simply says that in the area of rural America where we need to
attract doctors so women have adequate health care, especially if they
are having children, in those parts of the country--from the standpoint
of population, a small part of the country--we are going to have a
special consideration that allows doctors to be able to afford their
liability insurance.
We are going to follow what has happened in the law that has been set
up in Texas and California, two States which have confronted this issue
of liability insurance for doctors and have come up with a plan that
has alleviated the cost of the insurance so doctors are able to
practice in those States. It essentially says that in the area of
economic recovery, you can recover every expenditure, every loss you
had, if you were injured as a result of malpractice on the part of a
doctor delivering a baby in a rural area.
But in the area of pain and suffering, where so much of the huge
awards occur, and where you have had these real decisions that have
been in the numbers that are multiple millions, that won't happen any
longer. We are going to limit recovery in the pain and suffering area
to what has been the standard in Texas and California, which is
$750,000 per incident. The practical effect of this is very simple. It
will mean doctors who wish to practice in rural America, who wish to
deliver

[[Page S15190]]

babies for farm families and for other families who live in rural
America will be able to pursue those practices and still make a living,
something they cannot do in many parts of this country today, so women
in these communities will not have to drive for miles and miles to get
adequate health care, especially when they are having children.

I know in my State of New Hampshire, if you get north of the White
Mountains, one of the prettiest parts of this world, we have a very
difficult time attracting obstetricians. In fact, right now, I don't
think there is anybody practicing obstetrics up there because of the
fact the population base is so small it cannot support those practices
at a level that allows doctors in that region to be able to pay their
malpractice insurance. So women in that part of New Hampshire often
have to drive all the way to Hanover, NH, to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, which
is a superb hospital, or down to Laconia, which has a superb hospital.
But they literally have to drive through the mountains 2 to 3 hours to
get to those facilities. It can be extremely difficult in the middle of
winter to drive those roads. In the summer, obviously, it is not fair
to ask people to drive those long distances.
This is a very significant issue for rural America and for farm
families in America. That is why I have offered it on the farm bill.
The other side of the aisle, for whatever reason--I know the reason,
we all know the reason, the trial bar--has decided to resist this
amendment aggressively. They have demanded we have 60 votes before we
can adopt this amendment. They have basically said: We don't care that
women in America who live in rural America are not able to get adequate
health care. What we care about is the trial lawyer bar, and that is
unfortunate. But that is a reflection of the politics of our time.
The single largest contributing group to the Democratic Party today
is the Trial Lawyers Association. Those trial lawyers contribute to the
Democratic Party for a reason: They want them to support their agenda.
There is a simpatico there. Their agenda is supported essentially by
the Democratic leadership in this Congress and in prior Congresses. The
trial bar agenda includes not allowing any opening on the issue of
limiting liability relative to doctors--any opening. Even something as
reasonable as this which is so needed from the standpoint of health
care policy, which is so needed from the standpoint of good care of
children and mothers in a prenatal state, so needed in the basic
fairness for American citizens is resisted, not because it is not a
good idea but because they see it as an opening, a slight crack in that
door of their ability to bring these massive lawsuits for other people
who practice obstetrics across the country or for basically against the
medical community generally. They do not want any crack in that door to
occur, even if the crack in the door is meant to give American women
who live in rural communities, whose families work on farms, the
opportunity to be assured decent health care, especially when they are
in the process of having and raising a child.
It truly is unfortunate we have reached that point in this Congress
where very reasonable public policy, which is to make it possible for
more doctors to practice in rural America, is resisted in a knee-jerk
way which has no relationship to making our country stronger, our
people more healthy, and especially giving people who work in farm
America a better opportunity to live a quality life, especially if they
are having children.
This is not an attempt in any way to limit the ability of women who
are having children and find there is some negligent event occurring as
a result of a doctor's care to get a recovery. This amendment does not
have that impact. Recovery is in here. It tracks what happens if you
live in Texas. It tracks pretty much what happens if you live in
California. So it is not an attempt to do some draconian effort to
basically shut down lawsuits against doctors who may practice and make
mistakes in rural America. Just the opposite. It leaves those lawsuits
on the table. It makes them possible. It gives adequate and fair
recovery that is allowed for people in two of our most popular States.
What it does do and what it is almost guaranteed to do is to bring
more doctors into rural America.
It is interesting to look at the Texas experience because prior to
Texas passing its law, which basically tracks this language, they had a
very serious, basically a crisis in the area of having OB/GYNs practice
in Texas. Now they have a massive backlog of OB/GYNs who want to move
to Texas to practice. They actually have the opposite situation. They
now have a situation where doctors see Texas as a good place to
practice. So health care, for women especially of childbearing age, is
improving dramatically because there are a lot more doctors available.
Their biggest problem right now is making sure the doctors who want
to come into their State have the quality and ability to do the job
right. So they have a big backlog now. That is a complete shift from
what happened during the period prior to their passing the law. That
applies to everybody, but in the OB/GYN area, they lost 14 doctors, 14
obstetricians during the period 2003, but since they passed their law,
they have gained almost 200 obstetricians in the State. That is a big
difference. That means a lot of people are seeing doctors who were not
able to see them before.

We ought to give that same opportunity to rural America, generally,
and especially to farm families. That is why I have offered this
amendment.
It is not a big amendment in the sense of dramatic health care
changes for the world or for the United States, generally, but it is a
big amendment if you are a woman whose family works on a farm and you
want to have a child because--hopefully, if this amendment is adopted--
you are going to be able to see a doctor without having to drive 4 or 5
hours maybe through a snowstorm, and that is important. It is important
to that person, and it should be something we would do as a matter of
decency and fairness and especially as a matter of good public policy
relative to health care in this country.
I hope people will support this amendment. I understand the other
side of the aisle wants to debate a little while longer. That is fine.
I understand they want 60 votes. That seems highly inappropriate to me,
but that was the agreement that was reached between the leadership.
As I said, I am not trying to stop this bill. It does seem to me
there ought to be 60 Members of the Senate to stand up and say enough
is enough; we have done enough kowtowing to trial lawyers on this
issue. It is time to do something for the women who live and work in
rural America and make sure they have adequate access to health care,
especially to doctors who can care for them in those important and
special years when they are having children.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be
added as original cosponsors to amendment No. 3673: Senator Alexander,
Senator Allard, Senator Cornyn, Senator Corker, Senator Dole, Senator
Hutchison, and Senator Voinovich.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in
the Record letters of support representing the following groups: The
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American
Academy of Dermatology Association, the American Association of
Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Orthopaedic
Surgeons, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American
Gastroenterological Association, the American Society of Cataract and
Refractive Surgery, the American Urological Association, the Congress
of Neurological Surgeons, the National Association of Spine
Specialists, and the College of American Pathologists.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Office of the President, Department of Ob-Gyn, Tufts-New
England Medical Center,
Boston, MA, December 10, 2007.
Hon. Judd Gregg,
Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Gregg, The American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists (ACOG), representing 51,000 physicians and
partners in women's health care, strongly supports your
Amendment 3673 to H.R. 2419, the Healthy Mothers and Healthy
Babies

[[Page S15191]]

Rural Access to Care Act. We commend your continued
leadership and efforts to resolve the medical liability
crisis facing this nation and to protect access to health
care for our nation's women and children.
As you well know, the medical liability environment is
driving good doctors out of practice or out of their home
states. And when ob-gyns discontinue the practice of
obstetrics, refuse high-risk patients, or reduce their
surgical practice, women's health care suffers. This has been
a problem in the rural areas of several states--including
West Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, Missouri and Michigan--which had
some of the highest base rate premiums for ob-gyns in the
country last year.
Perhaps most troubling is the effect of the crisis on young
physicians. A 2006 survey of doctors in their fourth year of
ob-gyn residency, the last year before they enter patient
care, confirmed that a state's liability climate has a
powerful impact on where and how they will practice. A third
of residents indicated they had been warned or advised to
leave their current location because of liability concerns
and nearly half were already considering limiting the type
and scope of their practice. Residents named 7 states they
would avoid altogether: Florida, Pennsylvania, New York,
Nevada, Illinois, New Jersey and West Virginia.
ACOG is deeply committed to resolving the medical liability
crisis and supports federal legislation to enact reforms such
as the ones that have been so effective in Texas and
California. ACOG supports, in particular, provisions in your
amendment which would cap non-economic damages, limit the
number of years a plaintiff has to file a health care
liability action, allocate damages in proportion to a party's
degree of fault, and place reasonable limits on punitive
damages.
Your amendment is critically important to help solve the
medical liability crisis. We urge the Senate to move quickly
to enact legislation that will provide relief to physicians
and ensure continued availability of quality health care for
our patients.
Sincerely,
Kenneth L. Noller,
President.
____

December 11, 2007.
Hon. Judd Gregg,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Gregg, The organizations below are pleased to
support Amendment 3673 to H.R. 2419, the Healthy Mothers and
Healthy Babies Rural Access to Care Act. Thank you for
continuing to highlight the crisis created for ob-gyns and
all our specialties by unavailable and unaffordable medical
liability insurance.
Clearly, America's medical liability crisis does not affect
just one specialty or one type of patient, but we strongly
believe that every attempt must be taken to pass legislation
and raise public awareness of this crisis. We are fully
committed to focusing the Nation's attention on the need to
solve this crisis, and to work with you to identify a
successful strategy that will help get comprehensive medical
liability reform legislation signed into law.
If you have any questions, or need additional information,
please contact Tara Straw.
Sincerely,
American Academy of Dermatology Association, American
Association of Neurological Surgeons, American
Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons, American College
of Emergency Physicians, American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American
Gastroenterological Association, American Society of
Cataract and Refractive Surgery, American Urological
Association, Congress of Neurological Surgeons,
National Association of Spine Specialists.
____

College of American Pathologists,

Northfield, IL,
December 11, 2007.
Hon. Judd Gregg,
Senate Office Building,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Gregg: As the United States Senate considers
S. 2302, the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007, the
College of American Pathologists (CAP), representing 16,000
board-certified physician pathologists, supports your
amendment based on legislation you introduced, the Healthy
Mothers and Healthy Babies Rural Access to Care Act, S. 244.
Your amendment addresses the medical liability crisis facing
rural obstetricians and the women they serve. It also
represents a good first step towards comprehensive liability
reform for all physicians.
Pathologists work closely with their obstetrician
colleagues in caring for women's health care needs, including
providing Pap tests and laboratory tests conducted on
newborns. We witness the effects of exorbitant insurance
costs on obstetricians in our own communities when they are
forced to scale back their practices. In fact, an estimated 1
out of 7 obstetricians nationwide have stopped delivering
babies altogether.
The CAP believes the medical liability crisis requires a
national solution designed to help patients, not lawyers.
Your amendment's $750,000 cap on non-economic damages, which
includes a $250,000 cap for rural obstetricians, is a
thoughtful reform that will help ensure that women have
access to affordable quality care while preserving their
right to seek redress in the courts.
Again, the College of American Pathologists supports your
amendment.
Sincerely,
John Scott,
Vice President, Division of Advocacy.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield the floor and yield to the Senator
from Colorado on my time.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado is
recognized.
Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I thank Senator Gregg from New Hampshire
for his amendment. This is a commonsense amendment, and I think it is
entirely appropriate to have it on the agriculture bill because it is
one that will make a difference in rural America.
I support the amendment which is called the Healthy Mothers and
Healthy Babies Access to Care amendment, that contains measures for
targeted liability reform directed at curtailing the number of
frivolous lawsuits that are filed every year against obstetricians and
gynecologists, especially those in rural areas, such as many parts of
my State of Colorado.
This amendment would help those who are in the business of protecting
our mothers and children. The OB/GYN community has seen more litigation
in the past few years than any other health care profession. The
Medical Liability Monitor estimates that medical malpractice rates for
OB/GYNs have increased as much as 500 percent between 1999 and 2004 for
certain areas of the country. In 2004 alone, there was an increase of
about 130 percent in areas that did not have liability protection.
Every year, fewer and fewer OB/GYNs are entering the health care
industry, and every year more and more of them leave their practices
behind and leave their patients without access to health care or
diminished access.
What does it say that OB/GYNs are afraid to practice their
professions, as my constituents have expressed to me? We need to cut
down on the frivolous lawsuits against OB/GYNs so they can get back to
taking care of mothers and sisters and daughters and wives in rural
areas.
The Gregg amendment would provide for unlimited economic damages and
provide a stacked cap model that would keep noneconomic damages at or
below $750,000. The $750,000 cap stacked model would provide that there
would be up to $250,000 from a decision rendered against a health care
provider, $250,000 from a decision rendered against a single health
care institution, and $250,000 from a decision rendered against more
than one health care institution for each or $500,000 for all.
Those of you who come out of more urban areas may say that does not
seem like much. But if you are a practicing physician in a rural area
or a hospital in a rural area, $500,000 is a lot of money. If you have
a large metropolitan hospital, it is chump change, but in rural
America, it does make a difference.
It also provides punitive damages to be the greater of twice the
economic damages awarded, or $250,000.
This amendment also guarantees that lawsuits are filed no later than
3 years after the injury and extends the statute of limitations for
minors injured before age 6.
This language also intends to maximize patient recovery of payment by
focusing on attorney payment regulations. It also establishes standards
for expert witness rules, promotes fairness in the recovery of health
benefits, and it attempts to prevent double recovery.
This language also raises the burden of proof for the award of
punitive damages and protects providers from being a party in liability
suits for FDA-approved products.
Last, it keeps a focus on the patient by attempting to curtail
frivolous lawsuits.
In my State of Colorado, tort reform laws were enacted beginning in
1986. At that time, I happened to have been in the State legislature
and carried much of the legislation that brought about a tort reform
agenda for the State of Colorado.
Colorado created caps for noneconomic damages. They are considered to
be among the most reasonable in the country. Frankly, many OB/GYNs see
the tort reform laws in Colorado as beneficial to their practice and
cite this as a reason to move their practice to Colorado.
However, although they find practicing in Colorado to be preferable,

[[Page S15192]]

problems for OB/GYNs still exist in our rural areas. That is why I am
here to support the Gregg amendment, even though in Colorado we have
done a lot to try to reduce the burden of frivolous lawsuits it has
little impact because practitioners in the rural areas have to go into
our neighboring States and practice in those neighboring States. As a
result, they get impacted when they go over to those States, even
though we have a favorable environment in the State of Colorado.
It is not always easy to get across a mountain in a snowstorm, such
as we had in the last few weeks, so you go to patients in Utah, for
example, or maybe New Mexico, if you are on some of the border
communities.
Many physicians who serve in most rural areas of Colorado live in
towns bordering other States. Because of the reduction in the OB/GYN
workforce, it is now necessary for them to travel to patients to ensure
mothers in rural areas receive treatment. It often involves crossing
State lines so they may serve patients in rural areas of Wyoming,
Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. They are all
neighbors of the State of Colorado. In many cases, the laws in these
States do not protect the physician to the extent those in Colorado do
and at the very least increase costs for physicians.
Rural patients in this country need access to care and treatment,
plain and simple. If we continue to let trial lawyers create an
environment where physicians cannot afford malpractice insurance, we
run the risk of leaving our rural mothers without access to the doctors
they need. So even though we have favorable tort reform provisions in
Colorado which help reduce frivolous lawsuits, our neighbors do not,
and it is having an impact especially in the rural communities of
Colorado that border our neighboring States. The fact is, it makes it
more difficult to attract doctors who want to practice obstetrics in
those small communities.

In Texas, a good example where the legislation most recently went
into effect, amazing things have happened since September of 2003. They
have added nearly 4,000 doctors, insurance premiums have declined, and
the number of lawsuits filed against doctors has been cut in half. I
absolutely believe a focus needs to be made on liability lawsuits,
especially in the area of OB/GYN practice. And we saw similar results
when the legislature of the State of Colorado passed legislation
reducing the liability burden that is brought by frivolous lawsuits. So
I have seen it happen in my own State as well as the State of Texas.
I will continue to do my best to ensure that women and their
children, especially those in rural areas, have access to quality
health care and that frivolous lawsuits do not continue to line the
pockets of the plaintiff's bar. For these reasons, I lend my support to
Senator Gregg as we move forward on the passage of his amendment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have 10 minutes
from the opposition's time.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered. The Senator is recognized.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I was listening to this debate and was
looking forward to these amendments on the farm bill, and all of a
sudden I am hearing about pregnant women, and having babies, and suing
doctors, and I am thinking: What bill are we on? Why on Earth do we
have an attack on women in this farm bill? And it is an attack on women
in rural areas when you say we are going to have tort reform and we are
aiming it at the women in rural America because we don't like the fact
that they may sue if there is malpractice.
Men often say, well, they are doing things to help women. Watch out
when that happens. Men come to this floor and say: Oh, we are going to
take care of the women. This doesn't take care of women. This puts them
at risk. And they say: Oh, many more doctors will come to work in the
rural areas if we limit liability.
But look at Texas. What my friend from Colorado mentioned about Texas
is untrue. We have the statistics. There are no more doctors in rural
Texas after they passed this bill. What has happened is that women have
had their rights taken away from them.
Now, again, my friends on the Republican side couch this as an attack
on the trial lawyers. Oh, the trial lawyers are evil, and all that.
Watch out when people say lawyers are evil because when they are in
trouble, the first thing they do is call the best lawyer in town. I
have seen it myself, right here in the Senate. So watch out when you
see a blanket attack on all lawyers. I have to tell you, when a Member
on the other side gets in trouble, the first thing they do is call the
best lawyer in town, but they want to take away the rights of women to
sue in a tragic situation.
There are numerous examples that I can talk about, but one example
came to my attention for these purposes, just to show people on both
sides of the aisle some of the terrible things that do happen in these
childbirths.
I am a grandmother, twice, and I have to tell you that in both
cases--and even when I became a mom, twice--all very difficult;
premature births, problems, long labors, concerns, breach babies. These
are hard and difficult things. And OB/GYNs are my heroes. They are my
heroes. Doctors are my heroes. But doctors make, sometimes, terrible
errors, and they have to be held accountable or they will just go on
and do it again and again.
Now, why would we, on a farm bill, attack the women of rural America
and take away their rights? Let's talk about this particular case of
Donna Harnett. She happened to be in Chicago. Her doctor decided her
labor was not progressing quickly enough, so he prescribed a drug to
help induce more contractions. Later, when her labor was not
progressing, her doctor broke her water, found it was abnormal, and
rather than consider a C-section, the doctor decided to continue to
administer the drugs in hopes that the labor would progress.
Six hours later she had not delivered. Her son's fetal monitoring
system began alarming, indicating the baby was in serious respiratory
distress. The doctor finally decided, after all those hours, it was
time to perform an emergency C-section, but it was another hour before
Donna was taken into the operating room. During that time, the doctor
failed to administer oxygen or an IV to help the baby breathe. After
the baby was born, he remained in intensive care for 3 weeks, and she
later learned he had suffered substantial brain damage and cerebral
palsy as a direct result of the doctor's failure to respond to
indications of serious oxygen deprivation and delivery in a timely
manner.

In addition to all that, her doctor told her not to have any more
children because she had a problem with her DNA, indicating the fact
that the child was disabled was in her DNA. And, he said: Any of your
future children would similarly have mental and physical disabilities.
Clearly, he was protecting himself in that situation and putting the
blame on her. Since then, Donna has given birth to three healthy sons.
She sued the doctor responsible for Martin's delivery, and she
received a settlement. That settlement is helping her cover the costs
associated with Martin's care that are not covered by health insurance,
such as the used wheelchair-accessible van she purchased for $50,000
and the $100,000 she spent renovating her home to make it accessible
for her loving son. Martin is now 11. He will be at risk for health
complications, including a terrifying incident in August when he almost
bled to death because his trachea tube had rubbed a hole through an
artery. But he survived, and he is able to laugh and to love and to
attend school in his community.
Now, how would she be able to afford to take care of Martin if she
wasn't able to have justice? Donna said:

If there had been caps on the recovery system when my son
was injured, it would have torn our family apart and Martin
would be in an institution. Instead, he is able to live at
home with us where we can take care of him and make sure he
is happy.

Why on Earth do Senators in this body want to tell a woman like that:
Too bad, no help, sorry. It is wrong. I have seen it in my own State.
It is wrong. It tears families apart. Everyone here says: Oh, we are so
family friendly. We have family values. Well, I would like to think we
have family values that extend to a woman such as

[[Page S15193]]

Donna, to a mother such as Donna, to a loving family such as her
family, who, yes, wanted to buy a van so it was possible for her to
take her son in and to give her son a decent life.
You know, I don't want to be a party to a Senate that would tell a
woman such as Donna that she is just going to have to suffer for the
mistakes of a physician. And let me be clear: I am a fan of physicians.
I trust doctors. But, yes, they make mistakes. And when they make
mistakes, they have to be held accountable, just as we all do if we are
driving and we make a mistake. To put a cap on this and tell a woman
such as Donna: Sorry, your son is your problem, when, in fact, the
problem was created by medical malpractice, is an outrage--an outrage.
Anyone who votes for this amendment is saying to the women in rural
America: You don't matter. So they can couch it as an attack on trial
lawyers, they can do that all they want, but it is about the woman, the
mom, who has been mistreated in this fashion.
If we want to deal with issues such as malpractice insurance, count
me in. If we want to make sure some made-up case is thrown out of
court, I am with you. And, by the way, there are already laws to cover
that. But don't come here and say how wonderful you are being to the
women of rural America by imposing a cap on what they could collect
when they are damaged, when they are made sterile by a mistake, when a
child gets brain damage because of a mistake, because of a mixup. That
is not right.
And don't say: Oh, it is worth doing because you will get more
doctors to come into rural America. It isn't happening. The Texas
statistics are there, and I will share them with you. In 2003, when
Texas passed its law, 152 Texas counties had no obstetrician. Today, 4
years after passage, the number hasn't budged, with 102 Texas counties
having no obstetrician. The fact that some rural counties lack OB/GYNs
is not a function of malpractice premiums. It is a function of
population. The doctors practice where the patients are. So anyone who
stands up here and says: Oh, this is great because so many more doctors
will come into rural America, the facts don't show that.
I can tell you because now that I am of the age of a grandmother,
where I see so many of these births with my friends' kids, I can tell
you that these births are complicated. We want the best people taking
care of our women, whether they are in rural America or urban America
or wherever they are. And if there is a tragic mistake, such as the one
I related to you--a doctor just ignoring what is happening to the
patient, refusing to do a cesarean, depriving the child of oxygen, and
then turning around and telling the mother: Oh, it is your fault, it is
in your DNA, it wasn't anything I did--and then going and telling a
jury, well, even if you find in favor of this woman, you cap what she
can get--You are consigning that family to a life of tragedy, because
the mother in the case I talked about wouldn't be able to have the
people in her home to help her with her son. And she had three other
healthy babies. How dare that physician try to pin his malpractice on
her, tell her she better not have any more kids. She had three more
healthy kids.
So I stand here, Mr. President, as a Senator but also as a mom,
having had two extremely difficult births, where the doctors I had, the
same practice for both my kids, were wise, they were strong, they were
smart, and they handled it right. Having seen my own family experience
difficult births, I can tell you that you want the best handling it.
You don't want to put a cap on damages so that people who are less than
the best can go into this area and think: Well, I am protected. If I
make 10 mistakes, I can afford it because there is a cap on it. So big
deal. Disaster.
And to do this on the farm bill, it borders on the humorous, if it
wasn't so serious. Maybe we want to have an amendment about birthing
calves on the farm bill or something like that. But what are we doing
here? Taking an amendment that doesn't belong here and saying rural
women are going to be picked on. That is what they are doing. I am just
in disbelief that this is even before us. I hope we have a very strong
``no'' vote and put this baby to bed, because this comes up again and
again.

As I say, in my own State, I have met with parents who are just at
their wits' end because of this travesty and they have a one-size-fits-
all cap. I have met with parents whose child was born, there was
malpractice, and the child is blind, the child is deaf, the child is
sitting in a wheelchair. The mother and the father love that child.
They are driven into poverty because the insurance will cover just so
much.
We say we are for families? How can we say we are for families and
mean it and then tell the women of rural America: Too bad, you cannot
get what you deserve if a doctor makes a tragic--indeed, an
unbelievably tragic--mistake. You have to care for a child for the rest
of that child's life in the most loving way you can, but we are going
to put a cap on what you are going to be able to spend on that child.
This is not the America I know. This is not a farm bill that should
be turned into tort reform, some ideological quest by some of our
colleagues. This is not an attack on lawyers; this is an attack on
women.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak against this amendment, and
I am looking forward to voting against it.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum and ask
unanimous consent that the time be equally divided until we go to the
next speaker.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
Senator from Texas is recognized.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the
amendment that is pending because I do believe that if we can have some
malpractice reform, we can get more OB/GYN doctors, pediatricians, and
doctors in general, in our rural areas.
As I travel in my State, I hear the complaints, and have for the last
number of years, about lack of health care in our rural areas. It is
one of our largest issues in this country today. I want to talk a
little bit about our situation in Texas because the amendment before us
is modeled somewhat on the law that did provide medical malpractice
reform in Texas.
Before 2003, according to the Texas Department of Health, 158
counties had no obstetricians, 24 counties had no primary care
physicians at all, and 138 counties had no pediatricians. Texas ranked
48 of the 50 States in physician manpower for our population. Why were
we having such trouble? Because the cost of providing health care
before 2003 was unsustainable, largely due to increased litigation
activity which drove the medical malpractice insurance rate so high
that doctors were being driven out of Texas. In fact, the insurance
companies also left Texas because the claims were so high.
In 1991, Texas averaged 13 claims per 100 physicians. By 2000, Texas
averaged 30 claims per 100 physicians. Of these claims, there was a
disproportionate growth in noneconomic damages, damages such as pain
and suffering. It was this growth, in contrast to awards of economic
damages such as lost wages and medical care costs, that really spurred
the increase in the medical malpractice premium. In 1991, noneconomic
damages averaged 35 percent of total verdicts. By 1999, they averaged
65 percent. So the noneconomic damages--the pain and suffering
damages--really doubled just in that 8-year period, not even taking
into account the economic damages, which are certainly warranted
damages when there is any kind of malpractice.
From 1999 to 2003, the average malpractice premium increase in Texas
was almost 74 percent. The Texas Medical Liability Trust, which covered
about one-third of the State's doctors in 2003, increased rates by
147.6 percent between 1999 and 2003. We are talking 4 years. In the Rio
Grande Valley, physicians in general surgery and OB/GYN practices
ranked sixth and seventh in the Nation for the highest premiums in
2002. The impact of litigation on Texas's health care system was
undeniable and unsustainable.
Medical liability reform came about in 2003. There were bold changes
in the tort system in an attempt to restore access to care. We have
seen a dramatic change.

[[Page S15194]]

According to the Texas Medical Board, physician applications for
State licensure have doubled from 2003 to 2007. The Texas Medical Board
reports that since passing liability reform in Texas, Texas has
experienced a gain of 195 OB/GYNs, 505 pediatricians, 169 orthopedic
surgeons, 554 anesthesiologists, 36 neurosurgeons, 497 emergency
medicine physicians, and 37 pediatric cardiologists. Prior to reform,
Texas had five liability carriers. Since reform, Texas has added 3 new
rate-regulated carriers and 13 new unregulated insurers. The five
largest insurers announced rate cuts in 2005, with an average premium
reduction of 11.7 percent. These reductions produced $48 million in
annual premium savings.
Medical liability reform does work. We have attempted, on the floor
of the Senate, for many years to have a national medical liability
reform, even just focusing it on OB/GYN doctors and emergency room
doctors because there are shortages all over the country of these kinds
of services. There are shortages of physicians who are willing and able
to perform these services because of the high medical malpractice
insurance rates.
Everyone in our country, and certainly in the Senate, wants to make
sure that if there is a medical error that causes an injury to a baby,
to a mother, to anyone who is getting health care, certainly there
should be penalties. There should be payment for economic damages.
There should be payment for loss of wages and payment for pain and
suffering. But if you have lawsuits where the pain and suffering start
driving it rather than the economic damages and it starts to encroach
on the ability of doctors, even if they have a clean record, to afford
the rise in liability premiums, then I think we have to take a look.
It is particularly acute in our rural areas, where we have so many
farmers, which is, I am sure, why Senator Gregg brought forward this
amendment. I think it would be a great amendment to the farm bill to
provide better access to health care for our farmers in this country.
That is why, I am sure, Senator Gregg chose this bill, because we have
not had the opportunity to address medical malpractice reform since we
made the attempt last year in the Senate, which was utterly
unsuccessful, to be honest.
Because the problem has gotten worse in many States and because the
record in Texas after medical liability reform has caused so much
better care, more access to care, and more satisfaction with care in
Texas since the reform, I would like to see that model able to be
reproduced around our country and especially in our rural areas, which
is the subject of the bill before us today.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I oppose the amendment offered by Senator
Gregg, among others. It is certainly not within the jurisdiction of the
Senate Agriculture Committee, on which I have the honor to serve, but
is within the jurisdiction of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I
have the honor to chair. It is something that should be looked at
there. It would be like putting a Defense amendment on the Agriculture
bill.
But far worse than just the question of where the jurisdiction is and
why this amendment makes no sense here, it would limit the legal rights
of what rural women and children are eligible to receive when they are
severely injured in our health care system. It does not provide
protection for rural women and children. In fact, it leads to a lower
standard of care by treating them differently than all other patients
in the country. I am certainly not going to vote for something like
this and go home to my State, which is a very rural State, and tell the
women and children: I voted to make you a second-class citizen. The
amendment will overturn our State laws regarding the statute of
limitations. It would limit the legal rights of our most vulnerable
citizens.
I am always surprised at the other side when I hear, depending on
what the issues are: We have to protect the States. We have to protect
our State laws. We can't have the Federal Government trample on the
State laws. However, if it is something the major insurers want: Of
course we will override State laws concerning the statute of
limitations, we will limit the legal rights of our most vulnerable
citizens.
Nothing remotely related to this novel legal treatment of severely
injured rural women or children has even been debated or discussed in
the Judiciary Committee. I suspect because nobody would take it
seriously if you said we have to protect insurance companies, so we
have to cut the legs out from under rural women and children.
The amendment does nothing to protect rural victims of medical
malpractice. It does nothing to prevent the serious injuries of
malpractice in the first place. Caps on damages, such as the one in the
pending amendment, would arbitrarily limit the compensation that the
most seriously injured patients are able to receive. This says nothing
of what it does to State legislators, which is trample State
legislators by telling them that an amendment debated for a matter of
minutes on the floor, in our judgment, is so much better than the laws
of your State.
The central truth of the troubles of malpractice insurance is that it
is a problem in the insurance system and industry, not in the tort
system. High malpractice insurance premiums are not the direct result
of malpractice lawsuit verdicts. There have been enough studies to
prove that conclusively. Rather, they are the result of investment
decisions by the insurance companies that resulted in business models
geared to ever-increasing profits, as well as the cyclical hardening of
the liability insurance market.
Instead of blaming lawyers or, worse yet, blaming the victims of
medical malpractice, we should look at the special treatment Federal
law currently bestows on the insurance industry. They have a blanket
exemption from Federal antitrust laws. Most people don't realize that.
We assume the law applies to everybody in this country, but antitrust
laws do not apply to these insurance companies.
Our antitrust laws for everybody else are the beacon of good
competition practice, and when our antitrust laws are followed,
consumers benefit. How? They get lower prices, they get more choices,
and they invariably get better services. But when the insurance
industry operates outside of the structure of antitrust laws, and they
do not have to face any competition, then they are allowed to collude
and they can set rates. When they do, our health care system, our
physicians and our patients all suffer.
Earlier this year I introduced the bipartisan Insurance Industry
Competition Act, S. 618, along with Senators Specter and Lott and Reid
and Landrieu. It would assure that malpractice insurers and others
could not artificially raise premiums and reduce benefits through
collusion. This is a responsible solution to ensure competitive
pricing--putting the burden on rural victims of medical malpractice is
not.
If you were to try to put the burden on the rural victims, the women
and children of rural America, for somebody else's medical malpractice,
that is not the way to solve the problems.
Arbitrarily capping damages available to rural women and children
does nothing to solve the flawed medical malpractice insurance market.
It is a boon to companies that operate outside the antitrust system and
can collude to set rates anywhere they want.
I would suggest we do a thoughtful, collaborative consideration in
the Judiciary Committee where this discussion belongs, get a sensible
solution that is fair to patients and can support those in our medical
profession who want to practice quality health care.
This partisan amendment does not do this. It is not designed for a
creative solution to a serious problem. Anyone who wants to vote for
it, I hope they are prepared to go home and tell their State
legislature: We walked all over you in hobnailed boots, you are
irrelevant, we are the Senate. One hundred people here know far better
than the legislatures in all your States.
That is not the way to do it. That is not the way to bring things
about. So if you want real consideration of this, let's do it along
with raising the issues of why should the insurance companies be able
to collude, why should they be outside the antitrust laws, why should
they be able to meet behind closed doors and do whatever they want to
set our rates? That is what I ask.

[[Page S15195]]

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Gregg's
amendment. This is a frustrating issue because there are many factors
that contribute to the lack of physicians who serve rural areas of
America. We cannot escape the fact that rural areas of America are hard
hit by this, especially by a critical lack of OB/GYN physicians.
We have an opportunity to try to address that problem. The cost of
providing service in those areas is disproportionately high, in large
measure, because of the cost of our liability system.
We can argue what the best way is to address the cost of the
liability system. It might be easy to blame insurance companies, but
there is no question we ought to look for commonsense approaches to
deal with this problem; otherwise, we are not going to increase the
coverage and the number of physicians who are practicing in rural
America.
We have heard about the impact of State regulation from Senator
Hutchison, who spoke about her experience and her State's experience.
Many States have taken action to put commonsense controls in place on
the overall cost of the liability system, by not limiting physical or
economic damages for those who are harmed in malpractice cases, but by
simply putting commonsense limits on noneconomic damages.
There are many States that have taken this approach, and it is
important to note this amendment would not affect those States that
have enacted their own set of laws. This amendment targets States that
have made no attempts to address the problem. It targets rural areas of
the country where it is most needed, to help those rural areas get
better access, better service, to OB/GYN physicians.
While it may be frustrating, as Senator Leahy noted, to see an
insurance company that has made a bad investment decision--I am not
happy about that, he is not happy about that, that it might have an
impact on insurance costs--it is far worse to look at a rural part of
America, a rural county, a rural city, a rural town, that has no access
to the health care physician services it needs because of spiraling
liability costs in the system.
I think this amendment is a good-faith effort to begin to address
that problem.

Amendment No. 3822

Mr. President, I wish to take another moment to address a second
amendment Senator Gregg has offered. It is amendment No. 3822.
Mr. President, in the last few days, the morning temperature in
Manchester, NH, has been about 8 degrees; home heating oil costs are
$3.27 per gallon. These are simply the cold, hard facts of winter in
New England, 8 degrees and $3.27 per gallon.
As we continue debate this week on a comprehensive energy bill, I
hope we keep those numbers in mind. I hope we take a hard look at
programs such as LIHEAP, low-income fuel assistance, that can make a
difference for families in New Hampshire and across the country.
The Federal Government has limited power to have an immediate impact
on energy prices, whether it is a gallon of oil or a gallon of heating
oil or natural gas that might heat hospitals. Congress is in a poor
position to have an affect on the laws of supply and demand, but we can
help those who are most in need during a tough, cold winter; that
program, as I indicated, is LIHEAP.
Simply put, LIHEAP funding works. It is administered by the States
and local agencies that know and understand the people who need the
assistance, and they deliver it in a very effective way. Congress
passed the precursor bill to LIHEAP back in 1980, and in 2006, we
allocated over $3 billion for LIHEAP.
Last year, under the continuing resolution, LIHEAP funding was
roughly $1 billion less, and, unfortunately, the Department of Health
and Human Services has only been able to release 75 percent of each
State's allocation.
I know the Presiding Officer, Senator Sanders from Vermont, has
worked on this issue. We signed letters together in the past, letters
addressed to President Clinton, letters addressed to President Bush,
letters addressed to conferees and appropriators.
Now we have in front of us an amendment offered by Senator Gregg, and
one offered by Senator Sanders as well, that would try to address the
problem by adding to this farm bill nearly $1 billion in additional
funds for LIHEAP.
If we look at some of the unnecessary funding in this farm bill, it
becomes clear to Americans that we absolutely have the resources and
the capacity to make those allocations under the current budget
framework.
I am pleased to join Senator Gregg as a cosponsor to his amendment
that would appropriately fund this program. This has been a bipartisan
issue, both in the House and in the Senate. I have worked with
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make this kind of funding a
reality, and I think it is a tribute to LIHEAP that the program has
been able to maintain bipartisan support through the years.
We are pursuing a number of different ways to add these critical
LIHEAP funds to this farm bill, as well as any appropriations
legislation we consider in the coming week, and, quite frankly, the
people at home do not care how we go about it. They understand it has
been awfully cold in New England the past week, and heating oil still
costs well over $3 per gallon.
We need to get the job done. I am pleased to support the amendment
and I hope it is adopted by my colleagues.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the rural
access to care amendment sponsored by Senator Gregg. It is amazing in a
State such as New Hampshire, that could not be more different than the
State I reside in, Tennessee, that we have a very similar problem.
I commend his efforts on this agriculture bill, one that affects so
much of rural America, to, in a very surgical and thoughtful way, deal
with the issue of access to care.
As you might imagine, I spent an inordinate amount of time, in the 2
years prior to being here, in all 95 counties in my State. What was
most stunning was to see the statistics and talk to young women as it
related to their access to obstetrical care.
The fact is we have 91 of 95 counties in our State that are
considered to be rural counties. The number of OBs in those rural
counties from 1997 to the year 2003 dropped from 179 OBs to 103 during
that period of time.
In our State, more than 30 of our 95 counties have very inadequate
access to obstetrical care. In 15 of those counties, we have no
obstetrical access. I know the Senator from Vermont, the senior
Senator, talked a little bit about the insurance companies and the role
they have played. I respect greatly his views and certainly his
knowledge on this subject.
But what I found was this: We have young mothers-to-be in our State
who lack the ability to access OB care because of the fact that
malpractice insurance costs so much in that particular field of care,
and, therefore, they have been driven out, if you will, of the rural
counties in the State of Tennessee.
The fact is this amendment only focuses on rural counties. It only
focuses on OB care. It does not in any way affect those States that
have chosen to go ahead and address this issue themselves. I wish to
applaud him in being so thoughtful and so surgical in his approach to
this very pressing issue that, if you will, pits these young mothers-
to-be against those who are against any kind of malpractice caps.
The fact is this only addresses noneconomic damages. It does not in
any way affect economic damages. It does not keep families from getting
the most complete care necessary if something bad were to happen. I
fully support this. I wish to thank Senator Gregg for offering this
amendment. I urge my colleagues to support it also.
I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator would suspend, I wish to ask how much time
is remaining on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority has 36 minutes 48 seconds, the
minority has 20 minutes 40 seconds.
Mr. HARKIN. I assume in a quorum call the time is taken from both?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Only by consent.

[[Page S15196]]

Mr. HARKIN. If the quorum call is put in now, might I ask the Chair
to whom does the time run against?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is charged to the Senator who makes the
suggestion there is an absence of a quorum.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I think it is only fair to ask unanimous
consent any time under this quorum call be equally allocated to both
sides.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HARKIN. We have a little over half an hour of time left on this
side, about 20 minutes on the other side on this amendment. For those
Senators, this is the medical malpractice amendment by Senator Gregg
from New Hampshire. By consent, we had 2 hours of debate. The clock is
running. If any Senators wish to speak on this amendment, they better
hurry over here.
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. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Gregg amendment
No. 3673. He has entitled this amendment the Healthy Mothers and
Healthy Babies Rural Access to Care Act. The reason it is called
``rural access to care'' is so he can fit it into the farm bill because
it doesn't have much, if anything, to do with the farm bill. It is a
bill related to medical malpractice. It is an issue which Senator Gregg
dutifully brings before the Senate as often as possible. I respect him
for his point of view. I disagree with his point of view. But I think
it must be clear to those who are following the debate what is involved
in this bill and this amendment.
This is a farm bill that comes up once every 5 years. Senators Harkin
and Chambliss have worked hard to put together a bill dealing with
farmers and ranchers, nutrition programs, so many other items. Some on
the Republican side of the aisle have insisted that is not enough. They
want to bring in a lot of unrelated issues and debate them on the farm
bill. They were given permission to do so, and Senator Gregg has done
just that.
This amendment is important to understand. What Senator Gregg is
saying is, there is one class of people in America who will be limited
if they are victims of medical malpractice. This class of people in
America who will be limited in recovering for the damages sustained by
them and their family, this class of people that will be limited are
the women of America. Women of America will be the only ones limited in
recovering in court if they or their children are injured in
childbirth. What is the justice in that? No limitations on men for
prostate surgery but limitations on women delivering babies? I don't
understand his logic, and I don't think anyone, particularly if they
happen to be a woman, can understand why he decided to single out women
in America and restrict their recovery in court if they are innocent
victims of medical malpractice. That is what he does.
The Senator argues that we have to address the high cost of medical
liability insurance and the risk of being sued. That is the reason he
wants to limit the right of women in America to go into a courtroom and
argue they were either hurt or their children were hurt or killed in
the course of childbirth.
He claims his amendment will help ensure that rural women don't have
to drive long distances to see a ``baby doctor.'' But it is
interesting, this amendment is patterned after a Texas law that did not
bring more baby doctors to rural areas. I am sure the Senator from
Texas, who will speak after me, will address this.
In 2003, Texas passed its law. At the time it passed, there were 152
counties in that State without an obstetrician, no doctor to deliver a
baby. Today, 4 years after the passage of this Texas law limiting the
right of recovery for women who were injured as a result of
malpractice, the number has not changed. In Texas, 152 counties still
have no obstetrician.
The fact that some counties don't have an obstetrician may not be as
much about medical malpractice premiums as it is about population.
According to the American Medical Association, the number of OB/GYNs
nationwide has risen from around 39,000 in the year 2000 to over 41,000
in 2004. So there are more obstetricians practicing. But that hasn't
changed the circumstances in rural Texas because the doctors who are
practicing medicine involving the delivery of babies are practicing in
cities and suburbs. The Gregg amendment doesn't even address that
reality.
Supporters of proposals such as the Gregg amendment like to argue
that escalating malpractice premiums justify their effort to limit the
right of patients who have been injured to seek compensation. We have
had this argument before over several years. There is no doubt about
it--and I don't argue--medical malpractice premiums went up
dramatically. But as so many States have addressed this issue, we have
seen a change.
During the third quarter of 2003, malpractice premiums were 28
percent higher than the year before. But by 2004, malpractice premiums
increased only 6 percent. In 2005, they did not increase at all. In
2006, they actually dropped 1 percent. In 2007, they dropped 3 percent.
Malpractice premiums are going down. Yet Senator Gregg or another of my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle dutifully offers this
amendment or some variation of it every year without acknowledging the
real changes taking place.
Despite all the talk about frivolous lawsuits being filed against
medical professionals, medical malpractice payments by insurance
companies have remained steady when adjusted for medical inflation. And
the number of paid medical malpractice claims per physician in America
has actually declined. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the
number of paid malpractice claims for every 1,000 physicians decreased
from 25.2 in 1991 to 18.8 in 2003.
Malpractice premiums are going down. The number of claims being filed
per physician is declining. The number of paid malpractice claims is
going down significantly.
But even if malpractice premiums were still going up--which is not
the case--the Gregg amendment does not require insurance companies to
lower them. The Gregg amendment says: We will deny to women the
opportunity to recover in court for injuries to them or their babies,
and we are hoping the insurance companies will show mercy and reduce
premiums as a result. There is no linkage between the Gregg amendment
and actually bringing down malpractice premiums.
This amendment limits the damages that can be recovered by victims.
Keep in mind, these are victims who have legitimate claims in court.
They are the ones Senator Gregg would deny recovery for the actual
damages they have incurred.
Now, I will concede he allows some damages to be incurred--medical
bills and the like. But he will even, I think, acknowledge there is a
limitation on noneconomic damages of, I think--I read quickly through
this--I think in this year's version it is $250,000.
Now, if we want to turn this farm bill into a discussion on health
care, the issue we should be focusing on is one I think we all agree
has to be taken seriously. It is patient safety, medical errors. Dr.
Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality, has called medical errors by doctors and hospitals ``a
national problem of epidemic proportions.''
Senator Gregg's amendment does not address this. He does not address
one of the causes of injuries to innocent patients who go to a doctor
for what are supposed to be routine medical procedures and have a very
bad result. He does not address the medical errors that trigger medical
malpractice lawsuits.
A far-reaching study of the extent and cost of medical errors in our
hospitals was published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association in 2003. The authors of the study analyzed 7.45 million
records from about 20 percent of U.S. hospitals.
They found that injuries in U.S. hospitals in the year 2000--just 1
year--led to approximately 32,600 deaths, 2.4 million extra days of
patient hospitalization, and additional costs of 9.3 billion. That did
not include adverse drug reactions or malfunctioning medical devices.

[[Page S15197]]

The authors concluded that medical injuries in hospitals ``pose a
significant threat to patients and incur substantial costs to
society.''
What does the Gregg amendment do about patient safety and medical
errors? Nothing.
Here is what it does. It applies an arbitrary one-size-fits-all cap
on noneconomic damages in malpractice cases won by the patients. What
are noneconomic damages? Pain and suffering, disfigurement, physical
impairment, and scarring. How do you put a price on that?
If a person is going to be incontinent for the rest of their life, if
they are scarred in the face or another part of their body, if they are
in pain and unable to function, is that worth something? In the mind of
Senator Gregg, it is only worth $250,000--no matter what. That is it.
If your pain is going to be with you for a year, 5 years, 10 years, or
20 years--the same amount, $250,000.
It would reduce the statute of limitations within which an injured
patient can bring a lawsuit. It is more restrictive than the majority
of the States in the Union, cutting off claims for injuries or
diseases. If you do not file the claim on time, Senator Gregg says:
Sorry. Bad luck. Sorry that this poor woman is not going to have a
chance to recover, but that is the price she is going to have to pay
for his reform.
It would allow a reduction of damage awards because of other health
or accident insurance the patient might have. Imagine for a minute that
you have been wise enough, thoughtful enough, to buy health insurance
to cover yourself and your family. Your wife goes in to deliver a baby.
The doctor makes a serious error. The wife is injured. The baby is
injured, and the baby dies.
Now there are medical bills. Well, it turns out you had health
insurance. According to Senator Gregg, we should give to the offending
doctor or hospital credit for your wisdom in buying health insurance.
In other words, they do not pay for the medical bills if you paid for
them yourself through your own health insurance. Does that make sense?
Is that fair that the hospital or doctor guilty of malpractice would
profit because the victim had health insurance?
His amendment makes it harder for patients to pursue punitive
damages, and it would limit how much can be awarded--even when a
wrongdoer is found to have acted with malicious intent.
His amendment would allow insurers to string out damage payments over
a long period of time, meaning the insurers could keep the interest on
that money for themselves.
It would preempt State laws on lots of issues, including whether
patients' insurance coverage affects payments, how soon victims are
compensated, and, of course, statutes of limitations.
The amendment only applies to lawsuits involving OB/GYNs in rural
areas. Women living in rural areas are the ones on whom Senator Gregg
has focused. They are the only group of Americans he wants to deny an
opportunity in court for full compensation for their damages. I am sure
the women of America will be grateful. I do not think, if they read
this bill closely, they will believe it is fair or just. I do not.

Why would we want to treat rural mothers differently than those
living in the suburbs or cities? This amendment is the wrong solution
to the wrong problem on the wrong bill. Congress should not decide what
injured patients should receive. We have a system called a justice
system. We have judges, and we take an average group of people in
America--your neighbors and friends--11 or 12, and they sit in the jury
box to listen to the deliberations and decide what is fair.
I think that system has worked pretty well. And over the years, we
have said we will allow the States to write the laws about how these
lawsuits will be conducted. Over the years, there have been problems
with malpractice premiums, problems with patient safety, and the States
have responded to it, including my State of Illinois, by changing State
law. I believe the majority of States have already changed their
malpractice statutes.
That is the proper and appropriate way to approach this issue.
Senator Gregg wants to federalize this. He wants to make it a Federal
matter. He wants Congress to preempt the decisions of the States, and
he wants his law to preempt the decisions of a jury. He believes his
wisdom on what a person should be entitled to recover in a lawsuit
should be trumping the wisdom of a judge and a jury.
I guess I have more trust in those judges and juries. They do not
always come in and award for the plaintiff. Before I came to Congress,
I used to handle these lawsuits. I spent a number of years defending
doctors and hospitals, and a number of years suing them for medical
malpractice.
They talk about frivolous lawsuits. I want to tell you, we fought
long and hard before we took a case in my office involving medical
malpractice. They are complicated and expensive and went on for a long
time. I was not going to take a case that I did not think I could win.
It was not fair to the doctor. It was not fair to the plaintiff. It
sure was not fair to my family and my law practice. So we did not file
anything we knew to be frivolous, just to make noise. We made a point
of not doing that.
In this situation, for Senator Gregg to decide that a class of
Americans--women in rural areas--are going to be denied their recovery
in court, they are going to be treated differently--well, certainly
this is a worthy topic for the Judiciary Committee and others to debate
at some time about patient errors and medical safety, about malpractice
and premiums. But to do it on a farm bill?
We just had a debate earlier about how much money we are going to
give to people who grow asparagus. Yes, that was one of the amendments.
Now we switch from that issue to a question about whether a mother who
is giving birth to a child--where the doctor does not show up on time
or does the wrong thing and the child is injured or dies--whether that
mother can go to a court and receive compensation.
I think this is an amendment that should be defeated. I urge my
colleagues to join me in voting against this amendment--to join me in
supporting the basic concept that the States have been the source of
statutory regulation of medical malpractice claims, to join me in
saying it is not fair to pick out one class of people in America--in
this case women living in rural areas--and to say they cannot have
their day in court, to join me in saying we should be working together
to reduce medical errors and make it safer to go to a hospital, make it
safer to go to a doctor.
I respect the medical profession. I cannot tell you how many times in
my life I have relied on a doctor or a hospital for care for a member
of my family and was thanking God every moment that they were as good
as they are, doing as much work as they do, having studied as hard as
they did. But, please, this is a piece of legislation proposed by
Senator Gregg which has not been thought through. It is not fair. It is
not fair to the women who would be discriminated against by this
legislation. It certainly is not fair to their families if a tragic
consequence of medical malpractice means that a baby or a mother is
going to be disfigured, face pain and suffering for a lifetime, to say
that no matter how long it goes, no matter what happens, we cannot
allow them more than $250,000.
That, to me, is unreasonable. It is unfair. And it has no place on
this bill. I urge my colleagues to defeat the Gregg amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I express my appreciation to the senior
Senator from New Hampshire for bringing this important amendment to the
Senate floor.
We just heard from the distinguished assistant majority leader, who
is one of the best lawyers we have in the Senate. But I want to offer a
different perspective; that is, it does not do pregnant women a lot of
good to be able to sue for unlimited damages if they are injured in a
medical liability case if they cannot find a doctor to take their case
or to deliver their baby.
Really, what this amendment goes to is, how do we increase access to
health care and how do we deal in an area where I know there have been
complaints that it only addresses pregnant women and their ability to
find doctors? The fact is, if we could get agreement on the other side
of the aisle, I think this should be extended to cover

[[Page S15198]]

all doctors and hospitals and all types of cases.
But, as the Senators know, there are issues of germaneness that mean
there is only a limited ability to deal with a part of the universe of
the problem, and that is why Senator Gregg has offered this
legislation--which is called Healthy Mothers Access to Rural Care--on
this particular bill.
This legislation, as Senator Durbin noted, is modeled after recent
reform efforts that have taken place in my State, my home State of
Texas. I would like to talk a little bit about the dramatic
improvements in access to care that this commonsense legislation has
provided.
This is the subject of an interesting story in the New York Times,
dated October 5, 2007. The title of the story--apropos of my comments a
moment ago--is ``More Doctors in Texas After Malpractice Caps.''
I would say to the distinguished Senator from Illinois, this is not
about denying people access to the courts and recovery. There is
unlimited ability to sue for and recover economic losses as a result of
a medical liability incident. But it does place reasonable caps on
noneconomic losses, specifically pain and suffering.
The good news is, we do not have to guess as to whether this approach
works. We know because it has worked in that laboratory of democracy
known as the great State of Texas.
As I mentioned, this article highlights some of the successes of this
legislation passed a few short years ago in Texas. For example, it
says:

In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six
months.
[But] that is not for an appointment. That is the time it
can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to
practice.

In other words, there have been so many doctors moving to Texas who
want to get a Texas medical license because of these reforms that the
number of doctors has increased dramatically, and, thus, access to care
has increased dramatically throughout the State.
The article goes on to say:

Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional
amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits,
doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from
all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at
Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some
long-underserved rural areas.

This is particularly important, as the article says, in high-risk
specialties such as obstetrics and gynecology and neurosurgery and
other areas where it is hard to find doctors to come to practice
because of skyrocketing medical malpractice rates.
Well, this reform, in Texas, 4 years ago, and what this amendment
proposes are specifically designed to deal with those skyrocketing
malpractice rates by providing some reasonable limits on recovery for
noneconomic damages. It is fallacious to say it denies people access to
the courthouse or recovery. It doesn't do that at all. This article
goes on to say:

The influx, raising the State's abysmally low ranking in
physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board's
offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to
2,000 at last count.
It was hard to believe at first; we thought it was a spike,
said Dr. Donald W. Patrick, executive director of the medical board and
a neurosurgeon and lawyer. But Dr. Patrick said the trend--licenses up
18 percent since 2003--has held, with an even sharper jump of 30
percent in the last fiscal year, compared with the year before.

The article continues to talk about the experience of a pediatric
neurosurgeon--a high-risk specialty:

Dr. Timothy George, 47, a pediatric neurosurgeon, credits
the measure in part with attracting him and his long sought-
after specialty last year to Austin from North Carolina.
``Texas,'' he said, ``made it easier to practice and easier
to take care of complex patients.''

Why would we want to make sure there are more pediatric neurosurgeons
or specialists with that kind of ability and training and skills, to
make that available to more children who need that skill? That is what
this amendment would provide.
The article goes on to say:

The increases in doctors--double the rate of the population
increase--has raised the state's ranking in physicians per
capita to 42nd--

Up from 48th in 2001--

according to the American Medical Association. It is most
likely considerably higher now, according to the medical
association, which takes two years to compile the standings.
The Texas Medical Board reports licensing--

More than 10,000 new physicians since 2003, up from roughly 8,000--

in the prior 4 years. It issued a record 980 medical licenses
at its last meeting in August, raising the number of doctors
in Texas to 44--

Almost 45,000--

with a backlog of nearly 2,500 applications.

It is another example of people voting with their feet when we allow
conditions to exist that allow doctors to practice their profession in
a reasonable environment rather than appear as a victim of the
litigation lottery. They are going to come, and more doctors--more
high-risk specialties mean more patients are going to get access to the
kind of health care they need.
We know the opponents of some of this have basically said: Well,
people are going to be hurt if you limit noneconomic caps. The fact is
the people who are going to be hurt are the patients who are not going
to be able to get the doctors. Of course, we can't forget our friends,
the trial lawyers, who usually take 40 to 50 percent of every award in
a medical malpractice case. I submit that is part of the resistance we
have here, because trial lawyers who specialize in these kinds of cases
don't want to get hit in the pocketbook. They don't care as much about
access to health care as they do their own pocketbook.

In some medical specialties--

This article goes on to say--

the gains have been especially striking.

For example, an increase of 186 obstetricians, 153 orthopedic
surgeons, and 26 neurosurgeons.
This is the reason why physicians and health care providers have
found it a better place to practice their profession and why access to
care has increased as a result.
This article goes on to say there was an average 21.3 percent drop in
medical malpractice insurance premiums, not counting rebates for
renewal.
Justice requires that we embrace a national reform, particularly in
light of the fact that the American taxpayer, the Federal taxpayer,
pays roughly 50 percent of every health care dollar in America today.
This is no longer an isolated issue that can be handled or should be
handled State by State. We ought to look at the reality, and that is
that we need a Federal and national solution too. We are doing fine in
Texas because we passed this reform 4 years ago. But shouldn't we make
sure that more Americans--particularly more pregnant women--have
greater access to health care as a result of this commonsense reform?
As a matter of principle, those who have been wrongly injured deserve
their day in court. No one is suggesting we ought to close or bar the
courthouse door. If a doctor is at fault, he or she should be held
fully accountable. But we should also at the same time take care not to
destroy our health care system in order to protect unlimited damages
and the lawyers who bring those lawsuits.
The Texas approach has proven successful. This bill would simply give
the same boost to all Americans, particularly those most in need--
particularly rural patients and more particularly pregnant women who
need access to an obstetrician and gynecologist to take care of their
baby. It would be a shame if our colleagues on the other side of the
aisle continue to block, as they have done time and time again,
commonsense reform legislation that is guaranteed and proven to give
greater access to health care and doctors and to make sure all
Americans have access to the best health care possible.
I urge all of our colleagues to stand up for better access to rural
health care, particularly in obstetrics and gynecology, by passing this
important amendment.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wanted to speak for a few minutes on the
Gregg amendment simply because I have unique personal experience with
it. I am now somewhere close or over having delivered 4,000 children.
The last one was an 8 pound, 9 ounce healthy baby, no problems that we
know of. I also just signed a check to pay for my malpractice
insurance,

[[Page S15199]]

which next year will come to about $3,000 per baby I deliver--$3,000
per baby, per case. Now, that is excessive because I don't deliver that
many babies anymore. But on average, it is $300 to $400 to $500 for
every baby that is delivered in this country in terms of malpractice
insurance.
Why is it important to fix this problem, not just for OB/GYNs but for
all doctors? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The cost of defensive
medicine today on the basis of the litigious aspect of medical
malpractice causes us to spend $600 per person per year on tests nobody
needs, except the doctor needs to be able to say he went the extra mile
in case they get sued. That comes to about $150 billion a year of tests
that were ordered. That doesn't include the cost of the malpractice
insurance, which the year before last in Oklahoma rose 98 percent--a 1-
year rise. There are significant problems with the tort system in
Oklahoma that show the excessive costs. But more importantly, what
about the women and children? The heck with the money. What about the
women and children? What happens?
Well, we know we are not filling the spots for the OB/GYN residencies
in this country anymore because you can't afford to pay the loans and
get a job and earn enough and then pay for your malpractice to be able
to pay off your loan and make a living. So people are opting not to go
into obstetrics and gynecology. Why do they do that and what is the
result of that? The result is we have fewer trained specialists to
actually offer care. Who suffers the most--women in the large cities or
women in the smaller rural cities? The reason this is offered on this
bill is because it has tremendous direct application to the women who
live in rural America. Access is denied. We are now talking an hour, 2-
hour, 3-hour drives for OB care in Oklahoma because we don't have the
available people who will do this service.
There are two other points I want to make as we consider this,
thinking only about the women and children. One is that because of the
tort system we have, if you are a woman who has a C-section--not
because you can't physically deliver a baby, but because you had a sign
that your baby may be in trouble--the next time you come to have a
baby, there is an almost 80-percent chance that you could deliver that
baby naturally, without having to undergo surgery. But because of the
litigious environment, we now have hospitals all across the country
that forbid vaginal delivery after cesarean section--not because it is
that unsafe but because the risks associated with the procedure in
terms of the legal consequences make it financially not a risk that
hospitals want to take, let alone whether the doctor is capable of
doing it and managing that patient at all.
So what does that mean? It means we expose women to a major surgical
procedure, not because they need it but because the trial bar has
forced them to do it. We are now making decisions not based on medical
indications; we are making decisions based on legal implications. That
is the wrong way to practice medicine.
Finally, the third point I will make is as we see this shortage of
available obstetrical care in the rural areas, we say: We are going to
give you care, but then we give you somebody who is great in terms of
caring for you, and has some knowledge, and has some capability, but
isn't a fully trained physician. We give you a nurse-midwife. But if
you get in trouble, you are still going to have to have somebody come
in. Well, what do we know about that? What we know is that time makes a
significant amount of difference when we have a baby in trouble. So
what we are going to do is we are going to continue to increase the
costs of complicated deliveries, with children who get injured, when
the whole goal of the tort bar in the first place was trying to prevent
that, because we don't intercept and we don't interrupt a process that
could have made a major difference in that child's life.
In my hospital, you can't deliver a baby unless you have the ability
to do an operative procedure to handle every complication of
obstetrics. But that is not true around the country anymore because we
have decided we are going to do it in a less cost-efficient way.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. HARKIN. On both sides.
Mr. COBURN. I am happy with that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. COBURN. So our point is this: This isn't a perfect bill to be
talking about this issue, but it truly has impact to our agricultural
communities. They are the ones who live in the rural areas. What we
have done is we have moved away from the ball where we now practice
legal medicine, rather than medicine. We are offering a care that is
not as good as what it could have been. We are putting women through
procedures that they don't have to go through with a tremendous
increase in cost, all because we can't say there ought to be some type
of limitation so we can rebuild the medical structure.
If we really believe in women and children, we will grant the same
equality in the rural areas that we grant around the rest of this
country by making sure they have competent, well-qualified, certified
obstetricians and gynecologists to take care of them at this great time
of their life.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). The Senator from
Massachusetts is recognized.
Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, how much time do we have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority has 17 minutes.
Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 10 minutes.
Madam President, I came over to speak on an extremely important issue
dealing with the public safety of employer-employee cooperation.
First, I listened with interest to our colleagues talk about the
issues of malpractice and the costs to the health care system. The fact
is we have had in the Judiciary Committee extensive hearings on this
issue, and the root cause of the increases are not so much the problems
with the doctors and the patients, it is the insurance industry in and
of itself that has made poor investments. As a result of poor
investments, they have raised the tariff on the various doctors and
communities. This has been well documented. I wish to have material
printed at the appropriate place in the Record about these issues. It
is a serious issue--malpractice insurance--but it is important that we
find out the real reasons for that. It does appear to me we are not
getting the full story, certainly here on the floor of the Senate this
afternoon.
Today's vote on the Gregg malpractice amendment is a test of the
Senate's character. In the past, this body has had the courage to
reject the simplistic and ineffective responses proposed by those who
contend that the only way to help doctors is to further hurt seriously
injured patients. Unfortunately, as we saw in previous debates on this
issue, congressional Republicans are again advocating a policy which
will benefit neither doctors nor patients, only insurance companies.
Caps on compensatory damages and other extreme ``tort reforms'' are not
only unfair to the victims of malpractice, they do not result in a
reduction of malpractice insurance premiums.
We must not sacrifice the fundamental legal rights of seriously
injured patients on the altar of insurance company profits. We must not
surrender our most vulnerable citizens--women and newborn babies--to
the avarice of these companies. The idea of denying pregnant women
living in rural areas the same legal rights as pregnant women living in
urban areas is truly absurd. It is a transparent gimmick designed to
make this amendment appear relevant to a totally unrelated farm bill.
This bill contains most of the same unreasonable provisions which
have been decisively rejected by a bipartisan majority of the Senate
many times before. The only difference is that previous proposals took
basic rights away from all patients, while this bill takes those rights
away only from women and newborn babies who happen to live in rural
communities. That change does not make the legislation more acceptable.
On the contrary, it adds a new element of unfairness.
This legislation would deprive seriously injured patients of the
right to recover fair compensation for their injuries by placing
arbitrary caps on

[[Page S15200]]

compensation for non-economic loss in all obstetrical and gynecological
cases involving women in rural areas. These caps will hurt patients who
have suffered the most severe, life-altering injuries.
They are the children who suffered serious brain injuries at birth
and will never be able to lead normal lives. They are the women who
lost organs, reproductive capacity, and in some cases even years of
life. These are life-altering conditions. It would be terribly wrong to
take their rights away. The Republicans talk about deterring frivolous
cases, but caps by their nature apply only to the most serious cases
which have been proven in court. These badly injured patients are the
last ones we should be depriving of fair compensation.
A person with a severe injury is not made whole merely by receiving
reimbursement for medical bills and lost wages. Noneconomic damages
compensate victims for the very real, though not easily quantifiable,
loss in quality of life that results from a serious, permanent injury.
It is absurd to suggest that $250,000 is fair compensation for a child
who is severely brain injured at birth and, as a result, can never
participate in the normal activities of day to day living; or for a
woman who lost her reproductive capacity because of an OB/GYN's
malpractice.
Caps are totally arbitrary. They do not adjust the amount of the
compensation ceiling with either the seriousness of the injury, or with
the length of years that the victim must endure the resulting
disability. Someone with a less serious injury can be fully compensated
without reaching the cap. However, a patient with severe, permanent
injuries is prevented by the cap from receiving full compensation for
their more serious injuries. The person with a life-altering injury may
only be permitted to receive a relatively small portion of the
compensation to which he or she is entitled.
The proponents argue that they are somehow doing these women and
their babies a favor by depriving them of the right to fair
compensation when they are seriously injured. It is an Alice in
Wonderland argument which they are making. Under their proposal, a
woman in a rural county whose gynecologist negligently failed to
diagnose her cervical cancer until it had spread and become incurable
would be denied the same legal rights as a man living in the same
county whose doctor negligently failed to diagnose his prostate cancer
until it was too late. Is that fair? By what convoluted logic would
that woman be better off? Both the woman and the man were condemned to
suffer a painful and premature death as a result of their doctors'
malpractice, but her compensation would be severely limited while his
would not. She would be denied the right to introduce the same evidence
of medical negligence which he could. She would be denied the same
freedom to select the lawyer of her choice which he had. She would be
denied the right to have her case tried under the same judicial rules
which he could. That hardly sounds like equal protection of the law to
me. Yet that is what the advocates of this legislation are proposing.

Consider another real world example of how this bill would work. A
woman visits her OB/GYN to be treated for infertility. She is given a
medication which causes her to experience severe complications. A man
goes to his doctor with an infertility problem. His doctor also
prescribes medication, and he too experiences serious complications.
Both suffer permanent injuries as a result, and each sues the
pharmaceutical company which manufactured the two drugs. The woman's
noneconomic compensation will be arbitrarily limited to $250,000 no
matter how devastating her injuries and she will be unable to recover
punitive damages even if the court determines that the drug company
acted ``recklessly.'' In contrast, there will be no legal limitations
on the compensation which the man is able to recover, and he can
receive punitive damages if the drug company in his case is found to
have acted ``recklessly''. How do the sponsors justify treating two
patients with similar injuries so differently based solely on their
gender?
Of course, this bill does not only take rights away from women. It
takes them away from newborn babies who sustain devastating prenatal or
delivery injuries as well. These children face a lifetime with severe
mental and physical impairments all because of an obstetrician's
malpractice or a defective drug or medical device. This legislation
would limit the compensation they can receive for lost quality of life
to $250,000--$250,000 for an entire lifetime. What could be more
unjust?
This is not a better bill because it applies only to patients injured
by obstetrical and gynecological malpractice. That just makes it even
more arbitrary.
The entire premise of this bill is both false and offensive. Our
Republican colleagues claim that women and their babies in rural areas
must sacrifice their fundamental legal rights in order to preserve
access to OB/GYN care. The very idea is outrageous. It is based on the
false premise that the availability of OB/GYN physicians depends on the
enactment of draconian tort reforms. If that were accurate, states that
have already enacted damage caps would have a higher number of OB/GYNS
providing care. However, there is in fact no correlation. States
without caps actually have 28.2 OB/GYNs per 100,000 women, while states
with caps have 27.9
OB/GYNs per 100,000 women. No difference.
And that is only one of many fallacies in this bill. If the issue is
truly access to obstetric and gynecological care, why has this bill
been written to shield from accountability HMOs that deny needed
medical care to a woman suffering serious complications with her
pregnancy, a pharmaceutical company that fails to warn of dangerous
side effects caused by its new fertility drug, and a manufacturer that
markets a contraceptive device which can seriously injure the user. Who
are the authors of this legislation really trying to protect.
In reality, this legislation is designed to shield the entire health
care industry from basic accountability for the care it provides to
women and their infant children. It is a stalking horse for broader
legislation which would shield them from accountability in all health
care decisions involving all patients. While those across the aisle
like to talk about doctors, the real beneficiaries will be insurance
companies and large health care corporations. This legislation would
enrich them at the expense of the most seriously injured patients;
women and children whose entire lives have been devastated by medical
neglect and corporate abuse.

In the last few years, the entire nation has been focused on the need
for greater corporate accountability. This legislation does just the
reverse. It would drastically limit the financial responsibility of the
entire health care industry to compensate injured patients for the harm
they have suffered. When will the Republican Party start worrying about
injured patients and stop trying to shield big business from the
consequences of its wrongdoing? Less accountability will never lead to
better health care.
In addition to imposing caps, this legislation would place other
major restrictions on seriously injured patients seeking to recover
fair compensation. At every stage of the judicial process, it would
change long-established judicial rules to disadvantage patients and
shield defendants from the consequences of their actions.
(1) It would abolish joint and several liability for noneconomic
damages. This means the most seriously injured people may never receive
all of the compensation that the court has awarded to them. Under the
amendment, health care providers whose misconduct contributed to the
patient's injuries will be able to escape responsibility for paying
full compensation to that patient. The patient's injuries would not
have happened if not for the misconduct of both defendants, so each
defendant should be responsible for making sure the victim is fully
compensated.
(2) The bias in the legislation could not be clearer. It would
preempt state laws that allow fair treatment for injured patients, but
would allow state laws to be enacted which contained greater
restrictions on patients' rights than the proposed Federal law. It is
not about fairness or balance. It is about protecting defendants who
provide negligent care.

[[Page S15201]]

(3) This bill places extreme restrictions on the right of injured
patients to present expert testimony to help prove their cases. It
establishes arbitrary requirements that would make it virtually
impossible to qualify many of the most obviously accomplished medical
experts as witnesses. Without the ability to present highly relevant
expert testimony, the patient's right to her day in court will in many
cases be a hollow one.
(4) The amendment preempts state statutes of limitation, cutting back
the time allowed by many states for a patient to file suit against the
health care provider who injured him. Under the legislation, the
statute of limitations can expire before the injured patient even knows
that it was malpractice which caused his or her injury.
(5) It mandates that providers and insurance companies be permitted
to pay a judgment in installments rather than all at once. Delaying
payment amounts to a significant reduction in the award. If the patient
does not receive the money for years, he in reality is getting less
money than the court concluded that he deserved for his injuries.
(6) It places severe limitations on when an injured patient can
receive punitive damages, and how much punitive damages the victim can
recover. This is far more restrictive than current law. It prohibits
punitive damages for ``reckless'' and ``wanton'' misconduct, which the
overwhelming majority of States allow.
(7) It imposes unprecedented limits on the amount of the contingent
fee which a client and his or her attorney can agree to. This will make
it more difficult for injured patients to retain the attorney of their
choice in cases that involve complex legal issues. It can have the
effect of denying them their day in court. Again the provision is one-
sided, because it places no limit on how much the health care provider
can spend defending the case.

If we were to arbitrarily restrict the rights of seriously injured
patients as the sponsors of this legislation propose, what benefits
would result? Certainly less accountability for health care providers
will never improve the quality of health care. It will not even result
in less costly care. The cost of medical malpractice premiums
constitutes less than 1 percent of the Nation's health care
expenditures each year. For example, in 2003, health care costs totaled
$1.5 trillion, while the total cost of all medical malpractice
insurance premiums was $8.2 billion. Malpractice premiums are not the
cause of the high rate of medical inflation.
A study by the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of
Sciences determined that as many as 98,000 patients die in hospitals
each year as a result of medical errors. That is more than die from
auto accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS each year. These disturbing
statistics make clear that we need more accountability in the health
care system, not less. In this era of managed care and cost controls,
it is ludicrous to suggest that the major problem facing American
health care is ``defensive medicine.'' The problem is not ``too much
health care,'' it is ``too little'' quality health care.
Republicans in Congress and other supporters of caps have argued that
restricting an injured patient's right to recover fair compensation
will reduce malpractice premiums. But, there is scant evidence to
support their claim. In fact, there is substantial evidence to refute
it.
Caps are not only unfair to patients, they are also an ineffective
way to control medical malpractice premiums. Enacting malpractice caps
has not lowered insurance rates in the states that have them. There are
other much more direct and effective ways to address the cost of
medical malpractice insurance that do not hurt patients.
The claims regarding the recent malpractice reform in Texas has also
been misleading. Prior to Proposition 12, 152 counties reported having
no actively practicing OB/GYN doctors and 2 years after implementation,
152 counties still remain without doctors. In fact, it has not made
care available to women residing in rural counties. Even more
disturbing, the quality of care has diminished in urban areas and
according to the Texas Medical Association, the physician organization
of the state, the practice of ``defensive medicine'' has not diminished
and is likely on the rise.
If a Federal cap on noneconomic compensatory damages for rural
obstetrics and gynecological patients were to pass, it would sacrifice
fair compensation for injured patients in a vain attempt to reduce
medical malpractice premiums. Doctors will not get the relief they are
seeking. Only the insurance companies, which created market
instability, will benefit.
Doctors and patients are both victims of the insurance industry.
Spikes in premiums have much more to do with the rate of return on
insurance company investments than with what is actually taking place
in operating rooms or in courtrooms. Excess profits from the boom years
should be used to keep premiums stable when investment earnings drop.
However, the insurance industry will never do that voluntarily. Only by
recognizing the real problem can we begin to structure an effective
solution that will bring an end to unreasonably high medical
malpractice premiums.
I want to quote from the analysis of Weiss Ratings, Inc., a
nationally recognized financial analyst conducted an in-depth
examination of the impact of capping damages in medical malpractice
cases. Their conclusions sharply contradict the assumptions on which
this legislation is based. Weiss found that capping damages does reduce
the amount of money that malpractice insurance companies pay out to
injured patients. However, those savings are not passed on to doctors
in lower premiums. Weiss is not speaking from the perspective of a
trial lawyer or a patient advocate, but as a hard-nosed financial
analyst that has studied the facts of malpractice insurance rating.
Here is their recommendation based on those facts:

First, legislators must immediately put on hold all
proposals involving noneconomic damage caps until convincing
evidence can be produced to demonstrate a true benefit to
doctors in the form of reduced med mal costs. Right now,
consumers are being asked to sacrifice not only large damage
claims, but also critical leverage to help regulate the
medical profession--all with the stated goal that it will end
the med mal crisis for doctors. However, the data indicate
that, similar state legislation has merely produced the worst
of both worlds: The sacrifice by consumers plus a
continuing--and even worsening--crisis for doctors. Neither
party derived any benefit whatsoever from the caps.

Unlike the harsh and ineffective proposals in Senator Gregg's
amendment, these are real solutions which will help physicians without
further harming seriously injured patients. Doctors, especially those
in high risk specialties, whose malpractice premiums have increased
dramatically over the past few years do deserve premium relief. That
relief will only come as the result of tougher regulation of the
insurance industry. When insurance companies lose money on their
investments, they should not be able to recover those losses from the
doctors they insure. Unfortunately, that is what is happening now.
This amendment is not a serious attempt to address a significant
problem being faced by physicians in some states. It is the product of
party caucus rather than the bipartisan deliberation of a Senate
committee. It was designed to score political points, not to achieve
the bipartisan consensus which is needed to enact major legislation.
For that reason, it does not deserve to be taken seriously by the
Senate. It should be soundly rejected.
Public safety workers are on the front lines of our efforts to keep
communities in America safe. They are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week doing back-breaking, difficult work. They never blink, they never
falter. They do their duty and they do it well.
When the devastating fires raged in southern California, they battled
the blazes. When the I-35 bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, they were
the first on the scene. When the massive tragedy hit New York City on
9/11, their heroic work inspired the Nation and restored our spirit.
Just last week in Everett, MA, a tanker truck hauling 10,000 tons of
fuel suddenly exploded on the highway. Forty cars caught fire.
It took more than 3 hours to put out the flames. But because the
police, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians responded so
quickly, no one was killed in the accident. Words cannot begin to
express our gratitude.
These heroic men and women have earned our thanks and respect, and

[[Page S15202]]

they have also earned the right to be treated with dignity. That is why
it is a privilege to join with Senators Harkin and Gregg on this
bipartisan public safety cooperation amendment to the farm bill, to
guarantee that all firefighters, police officers, emergency medical
personnel, and other first responders have a voice at the table in the
life-and-death discussions and decisions about their work. It will
ensure that they are treated fairly. It will help them keep our
communities safe. It is no wonder that this amendment has received such
strong, bipartisan support. It passed the House of Representatives with
314 votes.
The amendment guarantees that every first responder will have the
same basic right that most other workers in the public sector already
enjoy--the right to collective bargaining. Many first responders
already have this fundamental right.
Every New York City firefighter, emergency medical technician, and
police officer who responded to the disaster at the World Trade Center
on 9/11 was a union member under a collective bargaining agreement. So
were the 7,000 firefighters who responded to the crisis in California.
They were able to respond more efficiently and effectively to the
crisis because they had a voice on the job. Many other first
responders, however, are not so fortunate. Twenty-nine States and the
District of Columbia guarantee all public safety workers the right to
collective bargaining. But 21 States--this chart reflects it--still
deny some or most or even all such workers this fundamental right.
Their first responders don't have a voice in policies that affect their
safety and livelihoods. That is both illogical and unfair.
We see all too often how dangerous these jobs can be. In 2005, 80,000
firefighters were injured in the line of duty; 76,000 law enforcement
officers were assaulted or injured; and almost 300 of these public
safety employees paid the ultimate price. First responders face chronic
long-term health problems as well. The brave men and women who
responded at Ground Zero now suffer from crippling health problems,
such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome,
depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
These men and women are profiles in courage. They walk into the
fires, wade into floods, and put their lives on the line to protect our
homes and families. They know what they need to have to be safe on the
job. They deserve the right to have a say in the decisions that affect
their lives.
The amendment grants these basic rights in a reasonable way that
respects existing State laws. States that already grant collective
bargaining to public safety workers are not affected by the bill.
States that don't offer this protection can establish their own
collective bargaining systems or ask the Federal Labor Relations
Authority for help. That amendment sets a standard. Each State has full
authority to decide how it will provide these basic rights.
These rights for first responders are not just important for the
workers, they are key to the safety of our communities and our Nation.
In the post-9/11 era, first responders have an indispensable role in
homeland security. It is vital to our national interest that the
essential services they provide are carried out as effectively as
possible.
As study after study shows, cooperation between public safety
employers and employees improves the quality of services and reduces
fatalities. That is why strong, cooperative partnerships between first
responders and the communities they serve are essential to public
safety. As Dennis Compton, the fire chief of the city of Phoenix, has
said:

When labor and management leaders work together to build
mutual trust, mutual respect, and a strong commitment to
service, it helps focus [a] fire department on what is truly
important . . . providing excellent service to the customers.

Our families, communities, and farms, deserve the best public safety
services we can possibly provide. It starts with the strong foundation
that collective bargaining makes possible.
We cannot call these brave men and women heroes in a time of crisis
but turn our backs on them today. We need to act now to make these
basic rights available to all of America's first responders. It is a
matter of fundamental fairness, an urgent matter of public safety.
The best way to give our heroes the respect they deserve is by
supporting this amendment. I urge them to do so.
How much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Nine minutes.
Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, let me go through some charts.
This chart is on California wildfires, farmland, crops, and
livestock. This is Riverside County. I think all Americans remember
these extraordinary fires that dominated the national news and
newspapers and were so devastating to scores of families out West not
many weeks ago. Riverside County lost $15 million in crop and farm
products. The fire scorched over 900 acres of farmland. There was
between $10 million and $15 million in damages to the avocado farms in
Ventura County.
These men and women who fight these fires understand how to be
effective and how to preserve both life and the farms in those
communities. That is what this is all about--that they have a voice in
the development of the policies, about how they are going to proceed.
Nobody who watched and listened to those extraordinarily brave
firefighters doubted the extraordinary competency and commitment these
individuals have. They serve, and serve our country very well.
This is an indicator that firefighter fatalities are on the rise. All
of us have seen the growth of fires. This is a rather awesome chart.
Firefighter fatalities are on the rise. The red line indicates this. So
we are asking more and more of them each year. This chart says that
every year firefighters put their lives on the line to ensure our
safety. In 2005, 80,000 firefighters suffered injuries and 115 died in
the line of duty. This year, approximately 100 firefighters will pay
the ultimate price while on duty.
Again, the point we are underlining here is that firefighters must
have a voice in the development of policies, whether it is in the
agriculture area or other areas. We need to give the first responders a
voice in the development of safety measures and how to use equipment
and use it effectively. You will have a more efficient kind of effort
in terms of controlling fires, and it increases the safety and
productivity of the firefighters.

These law enforcement officers are at risk on the job. In 2005--this
legislation would apply to first responders here--76,000 law
enforcement officers were assaulted or injured on the job and 157 died
in the line of duty. Injuries and assaults have increased by 21 percent
in the last 10 years. These jobs are becoming more hazardous. We have a
responsibility to do everything we can to work with these first
responders to help them do the job they can do and should do.
This chart shows that 9/11 firefighters enjoyed collective bargaining
rights. I don't think any American who witnessed that extraordinary
tragedy of
9/11 and witnessed those extraordinary men and women, those
firefighters who lost their lives in the line of duty on September 11--
they were union members with collective bargaining rights. They were
prepared to do their jobs, and they did it like no others. They
inspired a nation with their courage. Many are faced, as I mentioned,
with many of the lung diseases, carpal tunnel syndrome, and bad backs.
They need to be able to have those particular health care needs met and
attended to.
Finally, the Cooperation Act protects the rights of dedicated public
safety workers. This is a chart that tells what this legislation does
and what it doesn't do.
First, it establishes the right to form a union and bargain over
working conditions. It gives workers a voice in the working conditions,
which is so important in terms of both the efficiency and effectiveness
of their work. They would have the right to sign legally enforceable
contracts and resolve stalled disputes through mediation or
arbitration. There is a specific prohibition in terms of striking, but
they can solve this through mediation. That is how disputes will be
solved. It doesn't take away the authority of the State and local
jurisdictions. It doesn't require any specific method to certify
unions. It doesn't interfere with State right-to-work laws. It doesn't
infringe on the rights of volunteer firefighters.
This is legislation which has been carefully considered and reviewed.

[[Page S15203]]

There are, at last count, more than 60 Members of our body, Republicans
and Democrats, who have indicated support for the legislation. As we
have seen and mentioned earlier, when we saw these devastating fires
that went across the country and ravaged the farmland of this Nation
and we saw the extraordinary work of so many first responders, it
reminded us of our responsibility to make sure these extraordinary men
and women who exhibited such extraordinary courage will be treated
fairly and equitably. By doing so, they will be able to do their job
and protect America's families and the farmland in our country more
effectively.
Madam President, I withhold the remainder of our time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 5
additional minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, today I join my colleagues to address
an issue that is crippling America's health care system; that is, out-
of-control medical malpractice costs.
Wyoming, my home State, has been listed by the AMA as one of 19
medical liability crisis States. A few years ago, one of at the time
only two companies selling liability insurance in the State decided to
leave, leaving over 300 physicians scrambling for liability coverage.
Wyoming is losing obstetricians and gynecologists, emergency room
doctors, and even general practitioners, and we are losing them because
they cannot afford to pay the high cost of their liability premiums.
You may ask what is special about Wyoming in the sense that they pay
exorbitant malpractice premiums and why is it so different from all of
the doctors in the neighboring States. It is because all of the States
bordering Wyoming have enacted liability insurance reform. Wyoming is
the only State that has not. It is the ``hole in the doughnut,''
surrounded by the other States that have reform.
Providers in Wyoming fear being sued, and to compensate they spend
millions and millions of dollars on what is called defensive medicine,
ordering tests each year, and patients and taxpayers pick up the tab.
This liability crisis is especially unfair to rural women and
children, and it is so much unfair to them because they are losing
access to local doctors when they need them the most.
Rural and frontier States such as Wyoming are disproportionately
impacted when a local physician who delivers babies decides to leave
the State. We lost our only obstetrician/gynecologist in Wheatland, WY.
He delivered babies in three counties. Wyoming is a very large State.
There are only 23 counties. Many of the counties are larger than some
of the States on the east coast, and he delivered babies in three
counties. He left when his malpractice premiums went over $100,000 a
year.
Pregnant women in Newcastle, WY, needed to travel over 80 miles to
have babies delivered when practicing physicians in that community were
not able to afford the cost of their liability insurance. In my own
community in Casper, Dr. Hugh DePalo, who was born and raised in
Casper, WY, and loved the community and wanted to live there and give
back to all the people in the community, had his premiums increased 300
percent in 1 year.
Some Wyoming hospitals are paying malpractice insurance premiums that
exceed the amount they receive for delivering a baby. Wyoming
gynecologists/obstetricians and family physicians who deliver babies
pay $20,000 to $30,000 more each year for their insurance than their
counterparts in surrounding States, and that is because the State to
the south, Colorado, has instituted a $250,000 cap on noneconomic
damages.
This is not just a financial issue, it is a recruitment issue as we
try to recruit physicians in the State. We set up the Wyoming Family
Practice Program, where we train young physicians to deliver babies.
They are very capably trained, and yet they leave the State. The No. 1
reason people decide where they want to practice is based on where they
train, but still they leave because the malpractice premiums are so
much lower in the surrounding States. Why? Because the surrounding
States have passed liability reforms that are so needed and are part of
this bill.
This body has a responsibility to act immediately to protect access
for women who are having babies in rural communities. We should set
reasonable limits on noneconomic damages, we should provide for quicker
reviews of liability cases, we should assure that claims are filed
within a reasonable time limit, and we should educate people that
frivolous lawsuits only add to the overall cost of their health care.
That is why I support Senator Gregg and the position he has taken
today. His amendment would adopt a new liability model for
obstetricians and gynecologists based on the highly successful stacked-
cap approach. One might say: How successful is it? A large, full-page
story says:

After Texas caps malpractice awards, doctors rush to
practice there.

Of all the specialities of the physicians rushing to practice in
Texas, the No. 1 speciality represented in new applicants was
obstetrics and gynecology, those very people who are so needed in rural
communities to deliver babies.
I thank Senator Gregg for his efforts. I encourage Members to vote
for the amendment. We need to help ease the struggle rural women face,
rural women who are seeking access to capable physicians, not just for
themselves but also for their babies.

Amendment No. 3695

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 hours of debate equally
divided on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment.
The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for a
couple minutes for informational purposes without taking away time from
either side.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, we are about to begin 2 hours of debate
on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment No. 3695. I have been in discussion
with my ranking member, Senator Chambliss, about getting a couple or
three votes stacked. I hope sometime during this debate my colleagues
will yield me a little bit of time to announce we might have a consent
agreement for two or three amendments that would occur as soon as the
debate has ended on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment or time is yielded
back. That is what we are working on right now. Hopefully, in the next
several minutes, we will have some information about when those votes
might occur.
We are trying to work out this agreement. I am certain either Senator
Dorgan or Senator Grassley, one of the debaters, will yield us a minute
at some point during the debate to line up two or three amendments.
I ask unanimous consent that at the end of the debate on the Dorgan-
Grassley amendment, or time being yielded back, the Senate proceed to
vote on or in relation to Alexander amendments Nos. 3551 and 3553.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, I think the issue is as to what time
those votes will take place. As I understand the unanimous consent
request, it is following the debate on the Grassley-Dorgan amendment
that we go to votes on the two Alexander amendments.

Mr. HARKIN. That is right.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. At whatever time that might be.
Mr. HARKIN. If we use all time, those two votes will occur,
obviously, at about 6:20 p.m. If time is yielded back, it could be a
little bit earlier than that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Reserving the right to object, so we can give our
colleagues further information about where we are going, is it the
chairman's intention to move ahead then with debate on additional
amendments, hopefully maybe the Coburn amendments and the Sessions
amendment that might be voted on tonight, along with the Gregg
amendment?
Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend, yes. In speaking with the majority
leader, the majority leader said this is going to be a late night. We
have a number of amendments on both sides that I think we can debate
and we can vote on this evening. I say to my friend, yes, I hope we can
vote on the Coburn amendments, the Sessions amendment, the Gregg
amendment, and the Alexander

[[Page S15204]]

amendments, and there may be a couple on our side we are trying to get
cleared for short debates and votes yet this evening.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. I have no objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise with my colleague from Iowa,
Senator Grassley, and others who will be here to discuss the Dorgan-
Grassley-Ben Nelson, et al, amendment we put together to this bill. Let
me make a couple points. First of all, I don't think there is anybody
in this Chamber who can claim they have a stronger record for farm
programs than I do, having been in Congress a good long while. Family
farms are very important to me. I believe it is an important element of
this country's economy and culture to have the yard lights dotting the
landscape of America, people living on the land trying to raise a
family, raise a crop, and produce some livestock. That is very
important. I have spent a lot of time supporting family farming in this
country.
The legislation brought to us by the Agriculture Committee is a good
bill. I applaud my colleagues, Senator Harkin and Senator Chambliss,
and my colleague, Senator Conrad, for his work, and so many others.
This is a good piece of legislation. It improves slightly the safety
net so when there is trouble and tough times, family farmers understand
there is a safety net. It provides a disaster title for the first time
in a long time, so when there is a natural weather disaster or natural
disaster hitting family farmers, they can rely on this disaster title.
There are a lot of provisions that are good in this bill, including
some improvement with respect to the issue of payment limits. They
eliminated the three-entity rule. That is a step forward. I appreciate
that. I like what has been done, and I want to improve it because there
are a couple things that can be done that should improve it, in my
judgment. These deal with the issue of payment limits.
Let me start with this proposition: Does anybody in this Chamber
believe and want to stand up and say: Do you know what we ought to do
with the farm program? Let's give farm program benefits to people who
don't farm. Does anybody want to stand up and say, yes, that is our
policy, that makes a lot of sense? Let's provide farm program checks to
people who don't farm.
It is happening today. It will happen under this bill unless we make
this correction. My colleague from Iowa and my colleague from Georgia
missed all the applause I was giving them. They have done a great job.
I have applauded this bill coming out of the committee. I said I want
to improve it because this committee didn't finish the work on payment
limitations.
Two things: No. 1, we ought to limit farm program payments to those
who are farming. We ought not be sending farm program checks in the
mail to people who never farmed and will never farm. Yet that is
happening and will continue to happen. No. 2, there ought to be some
reasonable limit on payments.
My colleagues, Senator Grassley and Senator Nelson from Nebraska and
others, have joined me in saying that limit ought to be $250,000 per
farm. That is a reasonable limit, a very reasonable limit.
Let me describe how it works. We still have some holes we need to
patch. The Houston Chronicle described it--cowboy starter kids they
called it. We have a situation in which if land had certain base acres
for a crop, you didn't have to raise that crop or produce that crop.
You didn't have to plant the crop at all in order to get a check. Down
in Texas, they have what are called cowboy starter kits. You can have
20 acres of land or maybe 10 acres of land that were used to produce
rice 20 years ago and divide it up--have a house on an acre, run a
horse on the other 8 or over 10, hay it once a year, and you get a farm
program payment, despite the fact you have never farmed and never will
farm and that land hasn't produced a rice crop for 20 years.
Is that reasonable? I don't think it is reasonable. It will give rise
to the kind of stories we have heard repeatedly, stories that describe
who is getting the benefits of the farm program payments we thought
were supposed to be going to help family farmers through tough times.
Then we have someone with a cowboy starter kit on 10 or 20 acres who
gets a payment who has never farmed and never will farm on land that
isn't producing a crop.
The proposal Senator Grassley and I offer today says let's not do
that. Let's say, if you get a payment, you have to be farming, No. 1.
And No. 2, there ought to be a limit. I normally wouldn't use a name
such as this, but I am doing it because this was in the San Francisco
Chronicle. This was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, and it
shows payments. This is California. We could do this for a lot of
areas. This shows payments to 20 individuals and farm businesses, among
the top 20 finishers from 2003 to 2005. Constance Bowles from, San
Francisco, $1.21 million; George Bowles, same family, $1.190 million.
That is $2.3 million to these folks.
As I indicated, this is a San Francisco Chronicle story and is an
example of what is happening to undermine this farm program. Let me
read from the San Francisco Chronicle:

A prominent San Francisco patron of the arts, Constance
Bowles--heiress of an early California cattle baron, widow of
a former director of UC Berkeley's Bancroft library--was the
largest recipient of federal cotton subsidies in the state of
California between 2003 and 2005, collecting more than $1.2
million, according to the latest available data.
Bowles, 88, of San Francisco, collected the $1.2 million in
mostly cotton payments through her family's 6,000-acre farm,
the Bowles Farming Co., in Los Banos [California]. She could
not be reached for comment.
Another family member, George ``Corky'' Bowles, who died in
2005, collected $1.19 million over the same period. George
Bowles once ran the farm but lived on . . . Telegraph Hill. A
collector of rare books and 18th century English porcelain,
he served as a director of the San Francisco Opera and
trustee of the Fine Arts Museum.
The farm is now run by Phillip Bowles, who also lives in
San Francisco. He told KGO television that he's no fan of
subsidies, but if the big cotton growers in Texas get them,
so should he. Many of these businesses are getting 20 to 30,
sometimes 40 percent of their gross revenues directly from
the government, Phillip Bowles told KGO. I don't have a good
explanation for that. Somebody else might, but it beats me.

Well, if we want this sort of thing to continue, then let's not pass
this amendment. This is a very simple amendment Senator Grassley and I
offer, which says, A, you ought to be a farmer if you are going to get
a farm program payment. That is, you ought to have some active
involvement in the farm. Our definition doesn't require you to live out
there, but it requires you to have some active involvement. That is No.
1.
That is so reasonable that I guess I would like somebody to stand up
and say, you know what, we don't think the farm program is just for
farmers. We give educational loans here in this country. We appropriate
money for them. We won't let you get an education loan if you are not
going to go to college. There are subsidized home loans. You don't get
a home loan unless you are going to buy a home. We are going to give
assistance in the form of farm program paychecks, or checks to people
who don't farm? That doesn't make any sense at all.
Now, some will say, well, we have corrected all that. No, they
haven't. They haven't. Let me explain why. They intended to, or they
wanted to correct it. There was going to be an amendment passed that
would correct it, but it was not offered and not voted on. But one of
my colleagues said, we have a $200,000 limitation on payments and
Senators Grassley and Dorgan are saying $250,000. Well, that is a
little too clever. The payment limitation means you still get the loan
deficiency payment under the commodity loans--you still get unlimited
payments for all of the production, for the largest farm in America,
you get a price support in the form of an LDP under every single bushel
of product you produce. It doesn't matter how big you are. You can farm
in four States, if you want to, but you are going to get a support
price under everything you produce.
Does that make any sense to anybody? You have a payment limitation
without a limit? That is not a payment limitation. That is unlimited
payments in the LDP for the biggest farms in America, for every single
thing they produce.
Senator Grassley and I offer a very simple proposition, and that
proposition is a $250,000 payment limit and

[[Page S15205]]

that you have to be involved in farming in order to get it.
Now I showed this San Francisco article. This is California, but I
could show this for many States. But when one operation gets over $35
million in 5 years, I say that is farming the farm program. When 75
percent of all payments go to 10 percent of the farmers receiving
commodity subsidies, you know what is happening. Much of that is going
to the biggest farmers, the biggest corporate farms in the country, big
agrifactories, and it is producing the revenue by which they buy out
the land and bid against family properties for their property right
next door. It is happening all over the country.
If one believes that is what we should do, then God bless you, you
should not vote for this amendment of ours. But I believe this country
has benefitted by the network of family producers out in the country.
Some say, well, that is hopelessly old fashioned. You don't understand
that in our part of the country we have people who have millions and
millions of dollars of revenue and they are important to the economy as
well. If you want to farm two or three counties, you ought to be able
to do that. I just don't think the Federal Government has the
responsibility to be your banker.
I believe, and when I came here I believed it and I still believe it,
that a farm program ought to be a safety net that says to family farms,
when you run into trouble, you have a safety net--a bridge over
troubled times. We want to do that because farming is different. But
providing a safety net for families is very different than providing a
set of golden arches for the biggest corporate agrifactories in this
country.
I don't need four reasons or three reasons or even two reasons, just
give me one good reason we ought to collect taxes from hard-working
Americans and say we are going to transfer that money to some corporate
agrifactory that gets $30 million in 5 years. Give me one good reason
to do that. I don't think it exists.
Let me end where I began. I am a strong supporter of family farming,
a strong supporter of agriculture. I like what this committee has done.
I appreciate very much the work of Senator Harkin and Senator
Chambliss. I want to improve this bill.
Let me conclude with something a rancher and a farmer just west of
Bismarck, ND wrote once. He is a guy who is a terrific writer and he
asked the question--and I have asked it before on the floor of the
Senate, and it describes why I support family farming and why this
amendment is necessary--What is it worth? What is it worth for a kid to
know how to weld a seam? What is it worth for a kid to know how to
teach a calf to suck milk from a bucket? What is it worth for a kid to
know how to grease a combine? What is it worth for a kid to know how to
butcher a hog? What is it worth for a kid to know how to plow a field?
What is it worth for a kid to know how build a lean-to? What is it
worth for a kid to know how to pour cement?
You know something, farm kids know all of those things, and the only
university in America where they teach it is on the family farm.
Fortunately, in World War II, we sent millions of them from American
farms all across the world. They could fix anything. What is it worth
to have all that knowledge? You learn that on family farms across this
country. That is why family farming is so important. I say, today let's
stand up for a good safety net for family farmers. Let's not ruin the
farm program. And we will, as sure as I am standing here, ruin the farm
program and ruin the opportunity to enact a good farm program in the
future, unless we do what we know is necessary.
We have a farm program that is designed to be a safety net and to
help family farmers through tough times, but we cannot do that by
pretending this circumstance doesn't exist, whereby in the current farm
program we give farm program benefits to people who have never farmed
and never will, and we provide farm program benefits to the tune of
millions of dollars to the biggest corporate agrifactories in this
country. That is not what I came to Congress to do.
I hope we can stand up today on behalf of family farmers and say you
matter, and we are going to manifest that in the vote on this
amendment.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, what time do we have on Dorgan-
Grassley?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The proponents have 46 minutes, and the
opponents have 60 minutes.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield myself 14 minutes, as Senator Dorgan did.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senator may proceed.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I think everybody in this body would
agree we need to provide an adequate safety net for our family farmers,
and I think I ought to be totally transparent with the taxpayers who
might be listening, as well as my colleagues. I want you to know that I
farm in a crop share--in Iowa, we call it a 50-50 arrangement--with my
son. If we get farm payments, I get 50 percent of those payments. So I
have received farm payments and presently do. That is assuming prices
are low enough so you do receive those payments. Right now, they aren't
that low.
We are talking about an adequate safety net. In recent years,
however, assistance to farmers has come under increased scrutiny by
urban communities and the press. The largest corporate farms are
getting the majority of the benefits of the farm payment program, with
73 percent of the payments going to 10 percent of the farmers. With a
situation such as that, we could lose urban support for the safety net
for farmers.
Government payments were originally designed to benefit our small-
and medium-sized farmers, but instead, now, as you can see, the vast
majority of them are going to the smallest percentage of the farmers--
the biggest farmers. Unlimited farm payments have placed upward
pressure on land prices and have contributed to overproduction and
lower commodity prices. Increased land prices and cash rents are
driving family farmers and young farmers from the business of farming.
I have mentioned this before in other debates. Land in Iowa generally,
but I will use as an example land near my farm in New Hartford, IA, has
skyrocketed and is selling anywhere between $4,000 and $6,000 an acre.
In my home county, the value of an acre is up 64 percent since 2000.
Anybody listening might say, well, why is that bad for farming? Well,
family farmers don't buy land one day and sell it the next. You buy it
for the long haul. Sometimes farms have been in what we call century
farms, for well over 100 years. So this doesn't put income in farmers'
pockets. It does give them value. And if they were to die, I suppose
their heirs would get a lot of money.
Across the State of Iowa, the average land value per acre rose 72
percent in the last 6 years. All these figures I am citing have
something to do with the inability of young people to get started
farming. When the average age of farmers is 58 in my State, we ought to
start thinking about what we can do to make sure that young people, the
next generation of farmers, can get started.
My State isn't the only one where this is occurring, an increase in
land values. In a report published by two agricultural economists at
Kansas State University, land values have increased 64 percent since
2002. This trend is occurring in many other States as well. The average
of typical cash rents per acre in Iowa rose 25 percent in the same
period of time. Because if you can't buy land, and you want to farm,
you rent land. How are family farmers and young farmers going to
survive with prices like this? How can they even get started?
This brings to mind a conversation I had within the last week with a
young farmer near my home. He knows who gets these big payments in the
State of Iowa, and he said, so-and-so--and I am not going to give the
names out--just bought 600 acres of land. Why don't you guys do
something about subsidizing these big farmers to get bigger? Now, this
same young farmer would say to me, any farmer can get bigger all they
want to. That is their business. That is entrepreneurship. But should
we be subsidizing the biggest farmers to get bigger? He says, if you
want to do something to get young people started--this young farmer
said to me--put

[[Page S15206]]

a cap on what they are getting paid from the Federal Treasury. In other
words, 10 percent of the biggest farmers getting 73 percent of the
benefits out of the farm program is just plain bad policy.
I have been hearing directly from producers for years what former
Secretary Johanns heard in his farm bill forums held across the 50
States. Young farmers can't carry on the tradition of farming because
they are financially unable to do so because of high land values and
cash rents. If that was the market, okay. But if it is being influenced
by subsidies for big farmers to get bigger, they would say it is wrong.
They would also say it is wrong when you have 1030 exchanges, when it
is cash free, as having something to drive up the value of land as
well.
Professor Terry Kastens, of Kansas State University, came out with a
report on this subject. The report states that since the 1930s,
government farm program payments have bolstered land values above what
they otherwise would have been. Dr. Neil Harl, an Iowa State University
emeritus professor, worked with Professor Kastens on this subject, and
he determined that:

The evidence is convincing that a significant portion of
the subsidies are being bid into cash rents and capitalized
into land values. If investors were to expect less Federal
funding--or none at all--land values would likely decline,
perhaps as much as 25 percent.

That would give young farmers better opportunities to buy or cash
rent for less in order to get started farming. And that is necessary,
because the average age of farmers in the Midwest is about 58 years.
The law creates a system that is clearly out of balance. If we look
at the results posted here, it emphasizes what I have already said: Ten
percent of the farmers get 73 percent of the benefits out of the farm
program, and the top 1 percent gets 30 percent.
Senator Dorgan and I have offered this payment limits amendment which
I believe will help revitalize the farm economy for young people across
this country. This amendment will put a hard cap on farm payments at
$250,000. For a lot of farmers in my State, they say: Grassley, that is
ridiculously high. But we have to look at the whole country, so this is
a compromise.
No less important, we tighten up the meaning of the term ``actively
engaged,'' a legal term in the farming business. What that means is
that people have to be farming, because if we are providing a safety
net to someone in farming, I think they should be required to actually
be in the business of farming, sharing risks and putting their money
into the operation.
I wish to make a very clear distinction here. Some Members of the
Senate have advocated that the Dorgan-Grassley amendment is not as
tough as what is in the Senate Agriculture Committee bill or some say
it might be too tough. I want to say why this is not true, and I have a
chart here to bring this to your attention. We have to compare apples
to apples. That is what my chart does. Saying that the committee has a
hard cap on payment limits of $200,000 is not accurate. They only have
a hard cap on direct payments and counter cyclical payments. Let me
remind my colleagues, we have direct payments, we have loan deficiency
payments, and we have countercyclical payments. Out of those three, the
bill before us that we are amending has a hard cap on direct payments
and countercyclical payments, not on loan deficiency payments. The
Dorgan-Grassley amendment actually caps direct payments and
countercyclicals at $100,000.
In addition, the amendment will cap marketing loan gains at $150,000.
While the committee--this is the loophole, this is the weakness of the
argument that this bill tightens things up--it leaves loan deficiency
payments unlimited. This actually weakens current law. So while the
committee took some correct steps by closing the loopholes I have
advocated against by including the ``three entity rule'' and by
including direct attribution, it also takes a step in the wrong
direction by making payments virtually unlimited. This whole debate is
about good policy. Fixing one problem but leaving other doors open does
not do any good.
I also wish to make a clarification for some of my colleagues. I have
gotten quite a few questions about how the payment cap will actually
work. We set nominal limits at $20,000, $30,000, and $75,000
respectively, then we allow folks to double. So a single farmer who
would get $20,000 in direct payments can actually double to $40,000. We
set it at $20,000, so if they want to attribute the payments to a
husband and wife separately, they can. So a husband can have $20,000
attributed to him and $20,000 to the wife, for a total of $40,000, just
like a single farmer. One more clarification: If a farmer is working
with his two sons, each would be eligible for the $40,000 individually.
I wish to address some of the falsities my colleagues have raised
since the payment limit debate. They have argued that this is not
reform because it targets crops but not the Milk Income Loss Contract
Program or conservation. To say that we do not have payment limits on
these two programs is hogwash. The Milk Income Loss Contract Program
has probably the strongest payment limits of any program. What came out
of the Agriculture Committee includes caps on programs such as EQIP,
the Conservation Reserve Program, and Conservation Security Program.
Whether those caps are at appropriate levels is something that can
legitimately be debated but should not detract from what we are doing
on commodities through Dorgan-Grassley.
Now, our amendment produces some considerable savings. We think there
is money needed in some programs that are not adequately funded to help
small businesspeople, conservationists, and low-income people through
commodity programs. We support beginning farmer and rancher programs
and the rural microenterprise program. We also provide funds for
organic cost share programs and the Farmers Market Promotion Program.
A large priority of mine has always been seeing justice is done for
the Black farmer discrimination case against the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. This will double the amount provided by the committee for
late filers under the Pigford consent decree who have not gotten a
chance to have their claims heard. It is time to make these farmers
right who were discriminated against.
We support the Grassland Reserve Program, the Farmland Protection
Program, and finally, while the Agriculture Committee makes significant
contributions to the nutrition and food assistance programs, they were
not able to go far enough in light of the tight budget constraints. So
Dorgan-Grassley adds money in those areas.
The 2002 bill has cost less than expected. But this was not because
of the payment limit reform in 2002. In actuality, we increased the
nominal payment cap, and it continued the generic certificate loophole.
Instead, what has happened is that we have had some good years in
agriculture and prices have been high. That is why it cost us less to
have a safety net over the last 5 or 6 years, not because reforms were
put in, in 2002. I worked with Senator Dorgan on a similar measure in
2002, and it passed with bipartisan support, 66 to 31. Unfortunately,
it was stripped out in conference. I voted against the farm bill
because of that.
Let me remind this body that the Senate Agriculture Committee, out of
conference, set up a commission called the Commission on the
Application of Payment Limitations for Agriculture. That is this report
right here. They did this during conference as a sop to Dorgan and me.
Is my 14 minutes up? I ask for 2 more minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRASSLEY. This Commission was set up as a sop to Dorgan and
myself. We didn't get what we wanted, and consequently, you know, let's
have a commission study it.
The Commission ended up, in this report, recommending the very
measures which we have included in this bill. So they want a study? The
study says what we said in 2002 that the conferees didn't think we
ought to do. And we have had all the eggheads and farmers in this
country study the problem we presented in 2002, and they gave us the
results we have here.
The report said also that the 2007 farm bill is the time for these
reforms. You might remember the last time we had a vote on payment
limits was in a budget bill a couple of years ago. Many

[[Page S15207]]

of our colleagues said they agreed with what we were trying to do, but
they said the budget was not the right time; it needs to be done on the
farm bill. To all of our colleagues who said: Wait for the farm bill,
we are waiting. You have your opportunity. It is 2007. We have the farm
bill here.
By voting in favor of this amendment, we can allow young people to
get into farming and lessen the dependence on Federal subsidies. This
will help restore public respectability for the Federal farm program
and keep urban support for the farm program so we can continue to have
a stable supply of food for our consumers.
I call upon my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment, and
I reserve the remainder of time for our side.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. I yield 15 minutes to the Senator from Arkansas, Mrs.
Lincoln.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas is recognized for 15
minutes.
Mrs. LINCOLN. Madam President, I rise today in opposition to the
Dorgan-Grassley amendment before us. But before I explain why, I do
want to say I have tremendous respect for my colleagues from North
Dakota and Iowa. They are hard-working men who are interested in
working hard to get things done. I very much appreciate that. I hope
they can see the success they have already had from the hard work they
have put in since 2001 and what has come to fruition--the underlying
bill that came out of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
We worked very hard on that bill in the Senate Agriculture Committee.
We came out with a very balanced bill. It is a bill that, frankly, has
more reform, more substantive reform than any farm bill we have ever
done. I hope those two Senators--as I said, I have tremendous respect
for them and the hard work they bring to this body--I hope they do
recognize the success they have had since 2001 in moving forward in
reform.
I also come to the floor here to oppose this amendment because,
unfortunately, it is going to probably have some very dire unintended
consequences from the remaining part of this amendment that is not
included in the underlying bill.
I just have to answer a couple of the questions my colleagues have
brought forward.
The Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, mentioned land values. I have
approached almost every Member in this body to discuss the farm bill.
It is critically important to a small rural agricultural State such as
the one I represent, Arkansas. Agriculture is the basis of our economy.
In my discussions with Senator Grassley, he mentioned his concern about
land values. I went back to do my research, and I found a study done by
Iowa State University that gives us six reasons why those land values
are out of whack, and not one of those top six reasons is farm
payments. So I have a little concern in terms of blaming land values on
farm payments. There are multiple things there that we can see that
would cause concern.
I also would like to touch on a few of the realities for the hard-
working men and women who produce our food in this country, to respond
to some of the other criticisms I have heard and dispel a few of those
misrepresentations of farming that are out there.
The most often used--and it was used by my colleague here today--the
most used misrepresentation I encounter is the argument that a
disproportionate share of farm payments go to the top 10 percent of
farms in terms of size. I have heard it reported at 75 percent of the
payment, 80 percent--sometimes they even use the number 90 percent.
Honestly, it seems to change depending on the day or the source, and
that is why I thought I would bring a few charts of my own to clarify
the issue and set the record straight.
My first chart includes excerpts from a speech by the famed
agricultural economist from Kansas State University, Barry Flinchbaug.
Here is what he has to say about the distribution of farm payments
according to farm size: These programs are designed for the medium-size
farmers. They have done what they were supposed to do. We have 2.1
million farms. Small farms make up 84 percent of that, ``small'' being
defined as gross sales of less than $100,000. They produce 21 percent
of the food supply, but they receive 30\1/2\ percent of the payments.
Medium-sized farmers, on the other hand, make up 12.2 percent of the
farms, and they produce 28 percent of the domestically grown food
supply, and they receive 42.7 percent of the payments. Big farms with
sales of more than $500,000 make up more than 3.8 percent of the
farmers. They produce half of the food supply, and they receive 27
percent of the payments.
I think if we just look at this we will realize those that are
producing 78 percent of the commodities are only getting 58 percent of
the payments.
My second chart brings this point home a little bit more and
certainly in living Technicolor. As you can see, my source here is the
Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. We are pleased
to bring this. I know the pie chart Senator Grassley used probably uses
the definition of a farmer which even Senator Lugar earlier--I think
today or even yesterday, perhaps--agreed is completely out of whack. If
we are going to include an FHA student who earns $1,000 or more selling
a calf as a farmer, then we have a problem in terms of the definition
of a farmer. Unfortunately, that puts us out of whack in some of the
statistical dealings that we have to get a good, clear picture of what
we are up against.
I am going to go into some details on this chart, but I will first
point out that the chart shows farmers today receive a portion of farm
bill benefits that closely matches their percentage of total
production. As you can see here by the red line, which indicates the
percentage of Government payment, and the green line, which represents
the percentage of production, they are almost identical in many ways.
In fact, you will see the only discrepancy that exists is that the
farmer who produces 78 percent of the products, combining the nonfamily
farmers and the large family farms, receives only 58 percent of the
total farm program.
Now, remember, those are family farmers who are producing not just
food source but a safe and abundant and affordable food supply and
fiber, not to mention the fact that they are doing it in an
environmentally responsible way, respectful to all of the different
regulations that we impose. Other countries do not do that.
I will be the first to say I think that is a good deal. I think in
this country, to be able to be reassured that we are going to get a
safe food supply, that it is going to be done with respect to the
environment, that it is going to be done with respect to water and
water resources and clean water and clean air, all of those things,
that is very reasonable. It is a good investment. It is a good return
on that dollar.
When you see, in that blue line--and that represents the percentage
of farmers in a certain category, the percentage of farmers that
accounts for the 78 percent of that production in this country, who
are, in fact, that mythical and demonized 10 percent of the farmers our
critics like to refer to.
So if 10 percent are producing 78 percent of the food source that we
take for granted so often, then why should we not want our program to
follow the crops? As you can clearly see, 10 percent receive only 58
percent of the total farm program payment. I think all of these numbers
and certainly the charts make this point very well.
The bottom line is, the payments follow production. That is what we
want to see. We want to see an efficiency in that what we are striving
to do--and that is to provide a domestically produced, safe, abundant
and affordable supply of food and fiber--is done.
That is what the insurance of our farm program is there for. And this
reflects the fact that is exactly what those dollars are doing. They
are a good investment, and they are returning on that investment to the
American people.
Now, the other issue that was brought up in terms of my colleagues
about the marketing loan cap, I am still a little bit confused on what
the Dorgan-Grassley proposal does in terms of doubling those payments.
I am not sure if that means they are capped at $250,000 or if it is at
$500,000 if your wife or spouse is considered actively engaged in
farming. But I think many of us have asked those questions, and we are
still a little bit confused.

[[Page S15208]]

But when we talk about the cap, I would simply remind my colleagues,
the current law marketing loan is uncapped. The President's proposal is
uncapped. And the reason is, because we understand that in some of our
crops they cannot use the disaster assistance, which we have plussed up
about $5 billion, the crop insurance program is not as detailed to
their needs and concerns because, quite frankly, it is hard to find a
reasonable crop insurance plan that will, at a reasonable cost, protect
you against the kind of risks that you have.
So that marketing loan is key. It is key because it allows them to
remain competitive. So when they hit those troubled shoals they can use
that marketing loan to buy themselves time in the marketplace to be
able to market their crops.
We have found in years past that when we tried to cap the marketing
loan, what happens is particularly farmers in my area who do have
difficult times with crop insurance and have a very difficult time
being able to access disaster assistance end up forfeiting their crops.
So it goes to Government forfeiture and then the Government gets left
holding the bag. The taxpayer gets left holding the bag. That is not
what we want to see happen. We want these farmers to use the market,
and we want to provide them the kind of tools that allow them to use
the market, and that is what the marketing loan does, particularly for
growers of southern commodities.
So it is not capped in underlying or existing law. It is not capped
in the President's proposal. I think that is because people realize
that Government forfeiture of those crops is unreasonable.
I feel as if I have come down here and spoken so many times. I have
addressed the issue, particularly, of the Dorgan-Grassley amendment and
the overall farm bill numerous times recently because I believe so
strongly that the reforms already incorporated in the underlying bill
are more significant than any reform effort that we have ever
undertaken in farm policy.
We have made huge strides. I think both of these gentlemen will
recognize that. They certainly have to me in some circumstances. But as
a consequence of enacting the provisions of the Dorgan-Grassley
amendment, it is going to be devastating to some.
The amendments that are not already included in the underlying bill
that are in this amendment would be devastating to the hard-working
farm families, particularly in my State but in other Southern States
where we grew those commodities that are grown in the controlled
environment, which results most devastatingly in the outsourcing of a
significant amount of America's agricultural production. Eighty-five
percent of the rice that is consumed is grown in this country. Over
half of that is grown in my State of Arkansas. If we outsource those
jobs in rural America, if we outsource the production of that
unbelievable staple commodity, it is not going to go somewhere else in
this country. It is going go to our two biggest competitors more than
likely. It is going to go to Vietnam and Thailand.
When you look at the lack of restriction and the techniques that are
used in their growing processes, you are going to realize it is not
something we want to do, to outsource what we already have, and that
is, a safe production of a staple food source, not just for us but also
in terms of what we do globally.
Let me reiterate what outsourcing would mean. It means importing rice
from those places like I mentioned, where there is no environmental
regulation between sewer water or regular water on crops that are grown
there. Is that what American families want? Is that what American
mothers want in terms of looking at what they are going to do when they
serve that rice cereal to that new infant who is just learning to eat
solid foods?
Are they going to want to be reassured that what they are dealing
with is a domestic product that has been regulated in how it was grown
by American standards? Are they going to want to give that up and just
look to the consequences of what might happen in terms of imported
commodities?
I would argue that is a price far too high for us to pay. I think the
American people are very serious about wanting a safe and affordable
food supply. We should be very grateful for the wonderful bounty that
our farmers and ranchers provide this Nation. We should support them
with a modest safety net so they can continue to provide this Nation
and the world with this incredible safe, abundant, affordable supply of
food and fiber on the globe.

It is disappointing to me that some in the Chamber and those in the
media and special interest groups would take this for granted. You
know, if we look at what this costs us, the investment it makes, 15
percent of this bill is in the commodity's title. One-half of 1 percent
of the entire budget goes to this insurance policy of assuring
America's families they are going to get a safe food supply.
It is also disappointing that some in this Chamber would speak about
the dangers of poisoned food entering the country and jobs leaving the
country and not make the connection to this vital piece of legislation
providing this great country of ours with both safe food and jobs in
rural America.
Now, I know agricultural policy is not the most glamorous issue to
some Members. I know I probably bored some of my colleagues to tears
discussing the intricacies of this farm bill, and the ramifications of
this amendment particularly. So if my colleagues take nothing else away
from my remarks today----
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mrs. LINCOLN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for an
additional 2 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. LINCOLN. If the Senators take nothing else away from my remarks
today, please hear this: We have included the most significant reform
in farm program history in the underlying bill. In the great balance
and the productive piece that we produced out of the Senate Agriculture
Committee that was passed by unanimous consent, not one dissenting
vote, and I challenge anyone to say that is not the case, that this is
not the most significant reform that we have ever provided in a farm
bill. It is.
We also were very cautious not to get so close to the line that we
end up outsourcing our food supply. I think that is very important to
America's families across this great country. No American wants our
country to rely on foreign sources of food like we do foreign sources
of oil. We did not get there overnight, but we are there.
We depend on foreign oil right now. And, unfortunately, if this
happens, we are going to see 10 to 15 years from now that we are
becoming dependent on foreign countries for our food source. If we do
not have the courage to inform the American people of that fact, then
we should be ashamed of ourselves.
I urge each of you and your staffs to take a moment and look at this
bill and the reforms that we have made. They are significant, and they
should be enough for critics of farm policy, who, I suggest to you,
will never be satisfied. Those who condemn us, those who condemn us for
not taking the extra amount in terms of the reform that Senators
Grassley and Dorgan want to take, will never be happy with any amount
of reform. They will only be happy when we eliminate the safety net
that we provide farmers, but in a slightly different way.
A vote against the Dorgan-Grassley amendment is still a vote for the
most significant farm program reform in the history of our country.
I would like to take a moment and walk through the reforms included
in the bill. I will wait for a later moment to do that. I certainly
want to encourage my colleagues to vote against the Dorgan-Grassley
amendment.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, earlier the Senator from Iowa,
Chairman Harkin, announced a unanimous consent on two votes on
amendments of Senator Alexander following the debate on this particular
amendment.
I ask unanimous consent, as we have agreed, that after the two
Alexander votes, that Gregg amendment No. 3673 come up for a vote, and
that prior thereto there be 15 minutes of debate equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. I would add to that, that the Gregg vote on amendment
No. 3673 requires a 60-vote margin.

[[Page S15209]]

I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I want to thank Senator Lincoln for
her articulate and effective explanation of the difficulties in the
Dorgan-Grassley amendment. I absolutely am confident that it will
undermine the traditional agricultural safety net for farmers in the
Southeast.
There are a lot of reasons for that. I cannot say for sure what it is
like in other areas of the country. Apparently, the amendment would not
have the same effect in every area, at least in the same percentage of
farmers. But since the 2002 bill, input costs to produce agricultural
products have increased, particularly in the Southeast and particularly
for cotton, one of our most significant cash crops.
The cost of nitrogen, potassium, phosphate, and diesel fuel have
risen dramatically. I do not mean a little bit; some of them have
doubled during this time. However, support payments have remained
level.
As a result, the safety net already has, in effect, been cut in half.
The committee-passed bill essentially continues the 2002 structure of
having a safety net that is half of what it was a few years ago.
Producer groups in the Southeast understand the Federal budget
reality is not something they want to deny. And the lack of
availability of new funding impacts our ability to provide increases in
the safety net as we would normally expect to occur. But they are
united in their concern and opposition to any effort to further reduce
the safety net. The Grassley-Dorgan amendment would not impact
producers in the Midwest, it appears. Crops such as corn and wheat are
not expensive commodities to produce. As a result, payments do not have
to be as high to support farmers in those areas when prices fall.
Crops grown in the Southeast, such as cotton and peanuts, are high-
value commodities that cost a great deal to produce. For example,
cotton currently costs approximately $450 to $500 to plant and harvest
per acre. That is a lot of money. In Alabama, the average Statewide
yield is approximately 700 pounds per acre from year to year. However,
with current market conditions, producers are barely able to break even
with the safety net currently in place. Any further attempt to limit
payments will practically destroy agricultural production of high-value
commodities in the Southeast.
I suggest our colleagues take note of what the farm bill did. Before,
when you actually compute the support payment levels, they were
$360,000. Now, with the changes in amendments and loophole closings
that have occurred, it has dropped to $100,000. Multiple payments are
no longer effective, and a decreased limit has the potential to be very
harmful.
Let me share this thought with my colleagues. My family on my
mother's and father's sides are farmers. They have been in rural
Alabama for 150 years. I know something about farming, but there is
more to farming than just the farmer. My father, who had a country
store when I was in junior high school, purchased a farm equipment
dealership. There are a lot of other people who support agriculture
than just the farmers. To be effective, make a living, and farm in
agriculture in Alabama and throughout the Nation, you have to be
engaged in a large-scale operation with expensive equipment. You have
to invest a tremendous amount of money in bringing in a crop. If crop
prices fall, you can be devastated. As Senator Lincoln said, who is
going to fill the gap? It is not going to be somebody here. It is going
to be somebody else around the world who is receiving far more
subsidies than our people.
There is the farm equipment dealer. There is the fertilizer dealer.
There are the seed people. There are the people who labor at harvesting
and the people who process the cotton, the soybeans, the peanuts and
convert them to marketable products. That whole infrastructure, the
bankers who loan the money, the businessman in town, the hardware store
that supplies their needs, is dependent on the farmer. In Alabama, as
in most areas of the country, farmers are larger. They have far more at
risk. If they go under, not only do they go under, but entire
industries go under. We have cut this to effectively reduce the abuses
in the system. I thank the committee for doing so, and I oppose the
Dorgan-Grassley amendment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Pryor). The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Earlier, I asked unanimous consent to include the
Gregg amendment to be voted on following the two Alexander amendments.
In my request, I asked for 15 minutes of debate equally divided. I now
ask unanimous consent that 15 minutes be withdrawn.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. I yield to the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, 5
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the floor today
to join my colleagues, the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from
Arkansas, in a strong appeal to our colleagues to vote against the
Grassley-Dorgan amendment. As Senator Lincoln so eloquently stated,
this underlying bill is the single largest reform to the farm program
practically in the last two decades, if not forever. We have made
significant underlying reforms to try to limit and streamline subsidies
and to make it fair. But as the Senator from Alabama said, our rural
areas, particularly in the South and Southeast, need this bill to
continue to grow and prosper. There are parts of the country that are
doing very well. But in rural America, there are still difficulties. We
have over 200,000 farmers in Louisiana.
I respect the two Senators offering this amendment. They truly are
two of the most respected in this Chamber. But I have to say, perhaps
it would be easy for me to support an amendment such as this if the
crop in my State was getting two or three times the price it once did.
The fact is, rice and cotton are not in the best shape. We are being
pressed by imports. We have different rules and subsidies. With all due
respect to other Senators, corn has done very well lately. A couple of
years ago it was selling on the market for $2.10 a bushel. Today the
commodities rate is $4.33. So people growing corn are doing very well.
I have some of them in my State as well. But because of the ethanol
subsidies, because of what we have done on the fuel business, corn is
doing well. We are happy for that. But rice, soybeans, and cotton
fighting for markets, fighting against unfair trade practices. This
amendment will do them great harm.
Senator Lincoln has done an excellent job representing Southern
farming on the Agriculture Committee. She has, with our support, put
forward some reforms to reduce the cost to taxpayers. But we can't do
anymore. Asking us to do it is not right. For Georgia and for Alabama
and for Louisiana and parts of Texas, this is as far as we can go. I am
saying to our farm guys, we help you with subsidies for ethanol. We
know farmers growing corn are making a boatload of money. We are happy
for that. But we cannot accept this amendment. I urge our colleagues to
reject it. Let's move forward together on reform for the taxpayers and
for our rural areas.
On another note, our sugar farmers have not had a loan increase in 25
years. Now with this administration supporting huge imports from
Mexico, we are at a great transitional time for sugar. This is not the
time to cut them anymore. For rice farmers, which Senator Lincoln spoke
about--she is from a rice farming family herself; she most certainly
knows what it means to walk the rice rows--the current this amendment
would unfairly penalizes producers of rice. Any further cuts to our
rice industry would be detrimental.
I am pleased that with Senator Lincoln's assistance, we were able to
put in extra help for some of our specialty crops. Sweet potatoes we
grow a lot of, and we are proud of that crop and others. But this is
not insignificant business. This is billion-dollar business. It is
important to Louisiana. We need to hold the line with the reform.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on Dorgan-Grassley. We have given
enough from our region. We want to support reforms. We have supported
reforms. But enough is enough.
I am happy corn is now at $4.33 a bushel. I wish my sugarcane farmers

[[Page S15210]]

and rice farmers were getting two or three times what they were getting
a couple years ago, but they are not. Let's hold the line and vote no
on the Grassley-Dorgan amendment.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. I yield 5 minutes to my colleague from Georgia,
Senator Isakson.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. ISAKSON. I thank my colleague, Senator Chambliss.
Mr. President, I have great respect for Senator Grassley and Senator
Dorgan. But I have respect for a lot of other people. One of them was
my predecessor, a guy by the name of Zell Miller. From doing a little
research about the 2002 farm bill, Zell stood on this floor and spoke.
He made a statement I think is worth repeating. He said: This amendment
says to those of us in the South one thing--hold on, little catfish,
while we gut you.
It should not go without notice the two sponsors of this are from the
Midwest. Everybody on the floor talking right now is from the greater
Southeast. This is a punitive amendment to a bill they contend on the
one hand doesn't constitute reform, but it is probably the most
remarkable reform in farm policy in the United States in the history of
the Senate. We are moving in the right direction, but we are moving
there without destroying family farms. We are moving there without
playing favorites in agriculture.
Supporters of this amendment say these payments go to the few and to
the big. I couldn't disagree more. This amendment punishes the farmer
and his family who depend solely on the farm for their livelihood. Why
should we take the greatest, most abundant food supply in the world and
try to mess it up. That is exactly what this amendment would do. Don't
let these big numbers fool you. These farmers each year take risks
equal or greater than those of their brethren in any other business. In
fact, just alone, the equipment a farmer buys today in most cases
exceeds the cost of the home that most other Americans buy.
Some argue it is wrong for these payments to go to a small number of
big farms. But it is these very farms that are producing the vast
majority of our agricultural products. We should be supporting those
who are fueling the economic engine of our country. Why should anyone
want to punish family farmers who have made very large investments in
order to become competitive in an international marketplace? Why are we
going to hurt farmers who are trying to provide a decent living for
their families in the face of tremendous challenges and soaring costs
of production? They do not deserve this kind of treatment. With much of
our Nation's farmland in a drought and input costs at record highs, why
should anyone want to limit assistance during this time, at a time when
our farmers need our help and need it most?
I urge my colleagues to oppose the Dorgan-Grassley amendment. Let's
unify America in our ag policy, not have sectional differences,
certainly not have sectional penalties. Let's not allow one part of the
country to be gutted to the benefit of another.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from Louisiana,
Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia for stepping up and making a lot of
common sense in their comments. All of us are appreciative of the work
Senator Dorgan and Senator Grassley have done over the years in this
body. They have both been very supportive of agriculture. I
particularly am appreciative of that as the ranking member of the
Senate Agriculture Committee. I have been to Iowa. I know the kind of
farming they do there. It is different from the way we farm Georgia. I
have been to North Dakota. I have seen the way their farms operate in
North Dakota. It is different from the way we operate in the Southeast.
There are reasons why policies have to be different for different
sections of the country.
I wish to talk for a minute about this claim that all these farmers
getting payments are big farmers. The proponents of the Dorgan-Grassley
amendment claim that 10 percent of the farmers are getting 70 to 80
percent of the program payments. They characterize these farmers as
megafarmers and corporate farmers. Both Senator Grassley and Senator
Dorgan talk about megafarmers and corporate farmers as opposed to
family farmers they want to assist with farm programs. I wish to
explain that the farmers in the States of all my colleagues fall within
this 10-percent category, and they are ordinary farmers with average
size operations. They have families to support, and they are a vital
component of rural communities. Most of all, those 10 percent feed this
country.
I wish to make it clear, particularly to those who are considering
supporting Dorgan-Grassley, why an overwhelming majority of the farmers
in your State would fit within the category of being in the top 10
percent of payment recipients. In order to compare apples to apples, I
asked USDA to provide me with the attribution data for the 2005 direct
payments. I asked for the data in an attributable form because I wanted
the information to reflect what the universe of payees would look like
based upon the committee-supported bill which requires direct
attribution. The data from USDA is pretty interesting. It provides
clarity as to the size of farming operations that comprise the top
recipients.
In 2005, if a farmer received 1 penny more than $10,000 in direct
payments, they would have been considered to fit within the largest 12
percent of producer recipients, exactly the category Senator Grassley
referred to. Some of you might ask: How many acres does a farmer have
to farm to reach $10,000? Critics consider them to be megafarmers, but
the facts do not support this claim and here is why.

According to the USDA attribution data, direct payments average
$23.02 per acre nationally, which means if a farmer has 511 base acres,
they reach the $10,000 level. Now, I will be honest with you. Maybe it
is a good bit different in the Southeast from the way it is in the
Midwest. But if you try to farm 500 acres in the Southeast and feed a
family of four, you simply cannot do it. In areas where covered
commodities are produced, there are few farmers who would consider
themselves anything but a small farmer with this amount of acreage. Yet
the critics are not interested in telling you these small farmers fit
within the category Senator Grassley referenced on the floor recently,
when he claimed we have 10 percent of the large farmers in America
getting 70 percent to 80 percent of all the money.
To better understand how so many typical farmers fall within this
small percentage of payment beneficiaries, you must understand the
entire universe of program participants. If one operator rents seven
separate tracts from seven separate landowners, on a 75 percent-25
percent crop share arrangement, we end up with eight individuals
receiving program benefits--one operator and seven landowners.
Each of these eight individuals counts as a program recipient. But
since the operator is on a 75-25 percent crop share arrangement, he or
she ends up with 75 percent of the acres and production, while all
seven landowners account for 25 percent of the acres and production on
their respective farm. Or another way to look at it, the individual
operator accounts for 75 percent of the program payments but only 12
percent of the universe of individuals represented in that scenario. I
fail to see why this is being represented as inappropriate or unfair.
It is only logical that the operator, as a program recipient, who
accounts for 75 percent of the acres and production, receives more than
any of the other seven individual landowners, who each account for only
25 percent of the acres and production on their respective farm. This
simply reflects the one individual operator receives payments in a
higher proportion than the other seven individuals due to his level of
production and risk.
Now, there has been conversation and statements made tonight about
the fact we did not make real reforms.
Let me tell you where the heart of the difference is between the
Grassley-Dorgan proposal and the underlying bill. The heart of the
difference is in what we call the definition of an ``actively engaged
farmer.''
Under current law and under the language in the base bill,
individuals or entities must furnish a significant contribution of
capital or equipment or land and personal labor or active personal
management in order to be actively engaged in farming. So a farmer who
qualifies for payments must put at risk money, he must furnish land, he
must furnish equipment or he has to be

[[Page S15211]]

directly involved in the management of the operation.
Under the Grassley-Dorgan amendment, that definition is changed so
that for an individual to be considered actively engaged in farming,
they must furnish a significant contribution of capital or equipment or
land and personal labor and active personal management.
So what that means is any young farmer--as Senator Grassley referred
to--who has a difficult time getting into the farming business, if he
wants to come in and start farming, that young farmer, in order to
qualify for payments--remember, this is the person who is going to be
out there driving the tractor; this is the person who is going to be
getting dirt under his or her fingernails--they have to come up with
money, they have to come up with equipment or he has to come up with
land, and he has to be the guy who is making all the decisions on the
ground out there. He cannot have anybody helping him with it, so to
speak, who gets payments that help that young man along.
Which young farmer in America today can step right out of school,
step right out of high school or college, for that matter, who has the
ability to come up with capital, who can come up with the $250,000
combine, who can come up with a $150,000 tractor, who can come up with
even a used planter that is going to cost several thousand dollars? Who
has the ability to do that?
Well, the arrangement we have that is available to a young farmer
under the base bill and under current law is that when a young man or a
young woman wants to get involved in farming--a lot of the time it is
with their family, sometimes it is without--they have the ability now
to enter into a crop share or a landlord-tenant arrangement with a
landowner who oftentimes is in the retiring years of wanting to slow
down his farming operation or maybe completely get out of it and let
someone else get into it. But if he has land, he has equipment he is
willing to put into a partnership, a landlord-tenant arrangement, then
that young farmer has an opportunity today he simply would not have if
the Dorgan-Grassley amendment passes.
It is pure and simple. So when we say we are going to be taking care
of young farmers by putting a $250,000 cap on the payment limits any
farmer can receive and, thereby, we are going to allow young farmers to
come into an agricultural operation, we are kidding ourselves, and we
are not being straightforward because that simply is not giving that
young farmer any additional advantage.
Now, there has been conversation about abuses of the program and that
a lot of people who are not farmers--who may live in Los Angeles or may
live in Washington or may live in New York--are getting payments. That
is true.
This is my third farm bill. I have tried in every farm bill to try to
make sure that young man whom we talked about who is getting dirt under
his fingernails, whether it is a young farmer or an older farmer, is
the one who gets the benefit--I emphasize that, the benefit--of these
safety net programs.

We have sought to do that again. We have modified the language in
this bill. For example, Senator Dorgan has referred to what we commonly
call the ``cowboy starter kit,'' where we have base acres on a piece of
farmland that all of a sudden is turned into a subdivision or into a
development of some sort, and payments are made on those base acres.
Well, we have taken those base acres out of eligibility for farm
payments with language we have directly put into the bill because what
we say is that in order for base acres to qualify, a farmer has ``to
use the land on the farm, in a quantity equal to the attributable base
acres for the farm and any base acres for peanuts for the farm under
part III, for an agricultural or conserving use, and not for a
nonagricultural commercial, industrial, or residential use. . . .''
So when we talk about the ability of somebody to own base acres and
to take that land and develop it or maybe carve a 10-acre tract out of
there and still get payments on those base acres, you are not going to
be able to do that under this farm bill.
We went a little bit further because in the committee I had a dialog
with Senator Nelson and Senator Salazar relative to an amendment which
they had designed to prevent commodity program payments on land that is
no longer a farming operation or used in conjunction with a farming
operation. We have agreed to accept some additional language relative
to the amendment they proposed and we took in the committee.
The amendment requires the Secretary to reduce base acres for covered
commodities for land that has been developed for commercial or
industrial use, unless the producer demonstrates that the land remains
devoted exclusively to agricultural production, or for land that has
been subdivided and developed for multiple residential units or other
nonfarming uses, unless the producer demonstrates the land remains
devoted exclusively to agricultural production.
So we are taking the ability away from a commercial developer to ever
get any farm payments. I do not know who these particular individuals
are who have been referred to as the examples of who ought not to get
payments who have gotten payments, but I do recognize there have been
abuses, and we have sought to correct that. We have sought to correct
that, and we are going to make sure any payments that go on base acres
under the bill go to a farmer or an individual who is using that land
for agricultural purposes and not for any commercial development or
residential development purposes.
Are we going to cure all the problems? Look, I wish I thought we
could. I know with any program that is of this size there is going to
be some abuse somewhere along the way. We do not have a Federal program
in place today that is not being abused and that you cannot single out
1 or 2 or 10 individuals, particularly where we have an expenditure of
billions and billions of dollars. But we are certainly doing our best
to address the issue, to try to correct the abuses that have taken
place.
In this particular instance, we truly have made real reforms that I
think are going to close every loophole we know is out there today when
it comes to making sure payments go to folks who deserve the payments
and that the payments are at a level that is reasonable when it comes
to making sure we have a close watch on the taxpayer dollar.
I wish to close this portion of my comments by saying we will detail,
as Senator Lincoln said earlier, some of the specific reforms. But I
will highlight one.
I was involved in the writing of the 1996 farm bill, as was Senator
Grassley, as was Senator Lincoln. In that farm bill, which was enacted
5 years ago, we had a payment limit cap of $450,000. In the last 5
years, from 2002 to the language that is included in the base bill we
are talking about today, we have reduced that $450,000 down to
$100,000. Now, that is a $350,000 reform. Senator Grassley takes it up
to $250,000, but that is not apples and apples. But the fact is, we
have made real reforms in the dollar amount that folks are eligible to
receive from $450,000 down to $100,000.
We have also made other significant changes, such as elimination of
three entity, as well as the requiring of attribution to every farmer
in America who is going to be receiving payments under this farm bill.
With that, I will reserve the remainder of our time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

Amendment No. 3825 Withdrawn

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
pending second-degree amendment to Gregg amendment No. 3673 be
withdrawn.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I yield myself a few minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I will do it for the sole purpose of
commenting on a couple things the Senator from Arkansas brought up. One
was the statement where if our amendment is adopted, Senator Dorgan and
I would be working to eliminate farm program payments altogether. I
wish to make clear I am a believer in a safety net for farmers. We are
going to maintain that safety net. So I hope people will ignore that
suggested goal.
I think it is important to understand that farm programs have been
around since the 1930s. They have been around

[[Page S15212]]

as a safety net because farmers are at the beginning of the food chain
or, you might say, at the bottom of the food chain. We have a situation
where farmers for input, for producing a crop--producing the food our
consumers eat--pay what is charged for those imports. They might
bargain a little bit, but they don't have control; they have to buy the
imports or they aren't in farming. When they sell their products, they
have to sell what the market bears for the day they choose to sell.
They might choose a different day to sell, but eventually, whatever
they sell for is what the market is there; a farmer is not bargaining
for that market. So smaller farmers don't have the ability to withstand
things beyond their control, such as a natural disaster or domestic
policy such as, let's say, Nixon freezing beef prices, ruining the beef
farmers, or stopping the exports of soybeans so that they fall from $13
a bushel to $3 a bushel. Those are things a farmer doesn't have
anything to do with. So we have a safety net to help medium- and small-
sized farmers get over humps and things they don't control, whereas
larger farmers, the farmers whom we are putting a $250,000 cap on--the
larger the farmer, the more staying power they have. Now, I admit they
are affected by the same policies I have referred to, but they have the
ability to withstand that to a greater extent than smaller farmers.
Also, as I stated in my opening remarks, when you subsidize big
farmers, it helps them to get bigger, and it makes it more difficult
for people to stay in farming.

A second thing I wish to give a retort to is the use of quotes from
an article that says the largest farms in America produce 78 percent of
the commodities, but only get 56 percent of the farm program payments.
Well, the safety net wasn't set up to match the food source. It wasn't
developed to follow the crowd. It was set up to protect small- and
medium-sized farmers from things beyond their control, and to maintain
the institution of the family farm because it is the most efficient
food-producing unit in the entire world. I would compare it to
corporate farms on the one hand; I would compare it to the political
State farms of the old Soviet Union as an example. The family farm has
a record of being the most productive. That is to the benefit of the
farmer and the entire economy. It is to the benefit of the consumer.
I am not advocating that there is anything wrong with large farms or
large farms expanding; we just shouldn't subsidize them to do it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
Mr. DORGAN. How much time remains on the two sides?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 25 minutes 50 seconds on your side,
and 10 minutes 42 seconds on the other side.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my intention would be to use some time and
then perhaps yield to my colleague from Georgia, and then I would
prefer that we be able to close since it is our amendment, and then we
would be done with the time. If that would be satisfactory to my
colleague from Georgia, the ranking member, I would proceed on that
basis.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Certainly, Mr. President. That is fine.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me begin, as a couple of my colleagues
have--more specifically, my colleague from Arkansas--I have great
respect for Senator Lincoln, Senator Pryor, Senator Chambliss, and
others here who may disagree with Senator Grassley and myself. I very
much respect their position and do not in any way denigrate a position
or a philosophy or a policy choice they have made. I do think, however,
this is a real choice and an important choice, and I come at it from a
different perspective. I believe very strongly if we do not do the
right thing, one day we won't be talking about a farm program because
there won't be a farm program.
The fact is most people in this country don't farm. Only a small
percentage of people live out in the country, out on the farm, under a
yard light, trying to raise a family, trying to raise a crop against
all the odds. They put a seed in and in the spring they hope it grows
and they hope it doesn't rain too much, they hope it rains enough; they
hope it doesn't hail; they hope crop disease doesn't come; and they
hope that at the end of the summer, perhaps during the harvest season,
they get in and harvest that land and they have a crop that comes out
of the ground. Then they hope if they were lucky enough to get through
all of that and get a crop and drive it to the country elevator, that
they might get a decent price for it. They live on hope. The only way
people living on a farm in the country can exist is living on hope.
They are eternal optimists, believing that if they put a crop in in the
spring, that putting that seed into that soil is going to somehow
sprout into something bigger, and that at the end of the growing
season, they have an opportunity to make a decent living. That is what
it is about--because farmers live on hope--but because, in most cases,
when international wild price swings occur and the bottom falls out of
the grain market, if we don't have a safety net across those price
valleys, so those family farmers get economic leverage, the opportunity
to make it from one side to the other, they get wiped out. The same is
true when a natural disaster comes along.

There are some big enterprises that have the economic strength to get
through it. Perhaps when price declines, when disasters hit, they can
get through it, but the family farmer doesn't. They get washed away,
completely washed away. Then you have the auction sale. You have the
yard sale, the auction sale, and that family farmer is gone. It goes on
all across this country.
This country decided to do something very important. It decided to
say it matters that when you fly across this country tonight, that you
are able to look down and see people populating the prairies,
populating the rural areas with yard lights and family farms. Look down
sometime and see where they all live. Fewer and fewer of them live out
in the country. There are fewer and fewer neighbors. But we are trying
and struggling mightily to say to family farmers, when you are out
there trying to run a family farm and raise a family and raise a crop,
if you run into trouble, if you run into a tough patch, we want to help
you. That is what this safety net is about.
Now this safety net has grown into a set of golden arches for some.
Some of the biggest corporate agrifactories in the country suck
millions of dollars out of this program. Some of them are farming the
farm program--millions and millions of dollars. Is that what we believe
this safety net should be about? Is it, really? Does anyone here
believe that those who have never farmed and are never going to farm
should receive a farm program payment? Is there anybody who believes
that? Because that is what is going to happen. It is what is happening
now.
According to some pretty good research that has been done on who
receives and would receive the payments under the current system, there
are what they call ``down south cowboy starter kits.'' I described that
before. It is somebody who subdivides some land that used to produce a
crop and still gets a direct payment on a crop that is not produced
anymore. So they subdivide it and build a house on part of it and run a
horse on another and hay it once a year, and lo and behold, someone who
has never farmed and never will, living on ground that has not produced
a crop for 20 years, is going to go to the mailbox some day and open up
an envelope from the Federal Government and it is going to say:
Congratulations. You get a farm program payment. That is exactly what
happens today, and it is what is going to happen with this bill.
I support the farm bill that came out of this committee, but I want
to improve it because there is a glaring hole. The hole is that under
this bill, non-farmers could get farm program payments, and the hole
that is there is an unlimited opportunity to get loan deficiency
payments on the LDP or the marketing loan portion. My colleague will
say: Well, we have a $200,000 cap on farm program payments. But that is
not true; they don't have a $200,000 cap. They have a $200,000 cap on
the direct payment and the countercyclical payment, but the third
piece, the marketing loan and the loan deficiency payment, is
unlimited--no cap at all. The biggest farm in the country, on every
single bushel of commodity they produce, will get a price protection in
the form of a safety net from the American taxpayer. I don't think that
adds up.

[[Page S15213]]

I described a few moments ago a wonderful--apparently a wonderful
woman in San Francisco, a patron of the arts. I had a picture I decided
not to use because I don't think it is fair to her, but she was in the
San Francisco Chronicle; they did run a picture of her. Her name is
Constance Bowles. She was the largest recipient of farm program funds
in San Francisco. She received $1.2 million, her husband received $1.1
million. Another fellow still runs the 6,000 acres. He is receiving
money. He says: Well, I don't know why I am getting this money, but if
they are--if cotton and rice folks in Texas are going to get it, then I
think I ought to get it as well. I don't know. Do people think this is
what we ought to be doing? Do you think this represents a safety net?
It doesn't look like it to me. It looks like a glaring loophole.
The committee made some improvements. I said that when I started. The
three-entity rule is gone. That was something that was abusive, and
that is gone. I think that is progress. But I am telling my colleagues
more needs to be done, because if we pass this bill as is, people who
have never farmed and never will, will still receive farm program
payments. For land that hasn't produced a crop for 20 years, they will
still be able to get farm program payments. In my judgment, that is not
reform.
I believe when we read stories--and we will--when we read stories
that operations--the big corporate agrifactory gets $35 million in 5
years, I think a lot of the American people reasonably will ask the
question: What does this have to do with the safety net to help family
farmers through tough times? Again, if we are for change and reform in
a constructive way that says let's do the right thing, then we will
pass the amendment I have offered with Senator Grassley, Senator Ben
Nelson from Nebraska, and others, because we think it is the right
thing to do.
Someone said during this debate: This will injure the safety net. No,
no. Exactly the opposite. This is the one thing we can do that will
preserve and strengthen the safety net. If we don't do this, we won't
have a safety net at some point in the years ahead. It will all be gone
because the American people will say: If you can't do it right, we are
not going to let you do it at all. That is why I believe this is
important.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from
Arkansas, Mr. Pryor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Lincoln). The Senator from Arkansas is
recognized.
Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, as many others have said today, it is
difficult for me on a personal level to speak against this amendment
because I have such great respect for the two sponsors of the
amendment. However, let me say this to my colleagues who are here, or
the staff watching on C-SPAN 2 right now, for the Senators and staff
who are looking at this amendment and thinking about previous votes
they have made on this same subject and wondering what the differences
might be between this and other votes they have cast, there is one
major difference and that is the context of this vote. The context of
this vote is in a reform bill. Previous votes have been, as we have
talked about earlier, in budget bills, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
This one is in an agriculture reform bill.
The farmers in our section of the country have given up a lot. What
we have given up goes into nutrition programs, goes into conservation,
goes into energy, rural development, and new programs for specialty
crops. When we talk about adjusted gross income, the hard cap in this
bill that came out of committee, the three-entity rule reform, all are
major gives by farmers in our section of the country.
Quite frankly, if this amendment is adopted, I believe it will
destroy the American cotton and rice industry. We will continue to use
cotton and rice, but it will increase our trade deficit. We will import
it from other parts of the world. Our food and fiber will be grown in
countries that do not have our same standards on the environment or on
labor or in many other areas. So I have to ask my colleagues: Do we
think that is good public policy?
I called a friend of mine this weekend. In fact, it was on December
9. I called him and I said: Hey, are you all set up to go duck hunting,
because I want to take my 13-year-old down there and go duck hunting.
He said: Not yet, because we are still working the fields. They are
still working on December 9 in the rice fields in Arkansas. Now, the
rice is gone, but they have to maintain the levees. They have to do all
kinds of things. I don't even know what they do. But the truth is my
friend, and farmers all over this country, cotton and rice farmers,
have huge investments they have made. They have business plans. They
have bought combines. They have bought other very expensive pieces of
farm equipment. They would have to totally reconfigure their fields.
They would have to destroy a very elaborate and very expensive levee
system.
It is not fair for us to go through these reforms we have already
done and now to ask our rice farmers to do this.
So when I think about my friend, I think about what he would have to
go through--in fact, he is the hardest working person I know--I think
about the impact it is going to have on rural communities and about the
fact that we are talking about food security and protecting the
integrity of the American food supply, and we are talking about
importing more rice and cotton, et cetera.
It is hard for me to understand why the Senate would want to do that.
I have to remind my colleagues of a quote that our colleague in the
House made, Marion Berry. He said:

If you like importing your oil, you will love importing
your food.

I hear the arguments my colleagues are making about the so-called
cowboy starter kit. I have heard about that. It is a funny story, but
it makes you mad as a taxpayer. The fact is, the USDA today can fix
that problem. It should have already been fixed, but for whatever
reason, they have not fixed it. They have the authority to fix that
today.
Now, I have heard the other side say they are concerned about money
going to people who don't farm. There is one key thing that my other
colleagues need to understand, and that is that they may not be
farming, but the land is being farmed. The land is being farmed. They
share the risk in that crop. And I heard Senator Grassley say a few
moments ago that he and his family, and folks all over his State, enter
into these rent-type agreements. Well, so do we. But the way this
amendment is structured would absolutely destroy our cotton and rice
farmers in our part of the country.
In closing, this is difficult for me, but I am telling you, if this
amendment is adopted, I cannot support this bill. It is very hard for
me to come to the Senate floor and say I cannot support a farm bill,
which is so critical to our State. If this amendment is adopted, I
cannot support the farm bill.
With that, I ask my colleagues to look at this very closely. I thank
Senators Chambliss and Lincoln for their leadership.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cantwell). Who yields time? The Senator
from Georgia is recognized.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. How much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. We have 5 minutes remaining under the control
of the Senator from Georgia.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. How much on the other side?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 17 minutes.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, I yield half of the 5 minutes to the
Senator from Arkansas, Mrs. Lincoln.
Mrs. LINCOLN. First of all, I want to correct something. Senator
Grassley had some concerns about my comments earlier, and they may have
been misinterpreted. Senator Grassley is a champion for his farmers, no
question about it. I have no doubt about that. I didn't say it would
eliminate the subsidy program. What I said the amendment would do is
eliminate our ability as farmers in southern States in terms of being
able to mitigate our risks without that marketing loan, uncapped as it
is in current law. I wanted to make sure he knows.
Madam President, I want to take a few minutes to walk through some of
the reforms in this bill that people should be proud of. Over the past
5 years, I ever consistently heard press accounts unfairly
characterizing farm programs. All too often, the accounts are very
misleading--and that is a nice

[[Page S15214]]

way of saying it. However, as members of those States, we rely on a
strong farm safety net. I paid close attention to that criticism. I
have taken it personally because I believe it unfairly calls into
question the character and integrity of my farmers, the hard-working
farm families I am proud to represent in the Senate. Largely because
they are hard working, they are salt-of-the-Earth people, and they go
by the rules. The fact is, they may farm something different, and they
may farm a little differently than others, but they are still the hard-
working farm families of this country.
We have eliminated today in the underlying Senate Agriculture
Committee bill some of the often cited loopholes, the so-called three-
entity rule, and banned the use of generic certificates, which
producers use to make their entire crop eligible for the marketing loan
cap in less transparent ways. We have been asked to be transparent, and
that is what we have done.
For reformers, the underlying bill also creates direct attribution of
program benefits to a ``warm body'' by requiring the Secretary to track
payments to a natural person regardless of the nature of the farming
operation earning these payments.
Folks also wanted to dramatically lower the overall level that an
individual farmer can receive. That is what we have done.
I thank you for the opportunity to be here and represent those great
farmers. I want to say to all of my colleagues that a vote against the
Dorgan-Grassley amendment is still a vote for the most significant
reform in the history of our farm bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from Iowa is
recognized.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, how much time is left on our side?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 17 minutes remaining.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield myself 5 minutes.
Madam President, one of the things I think we have to remember is
there is reform in the bill that the committee has presented to the
Senate--reform that probably should have been done a long time ago.
I pointed it out in my opening remarks and in closing I want to kind
of emphasize that there are limits put on in the bill that sound very
reasonable. But I have to tell you there is one gigantic loophole you
have to consider, and out of the three forms of payments--direct
payment, loan deficiency payment, and countercyclical payment--the caps
that are in the bill, adding up to $200,000, are for countercyclical
and direct payments.
So if you don't have a cap on loan deficiency payments, that means
the payments farmers can receive are unlimited and, from that
standpoint, when loan deficiency payments are considered, there is not
a hard cap. Now, the adjective, ``hard,'' is applicable to Dorgan-
Grassley, and it is very important because we have had caps on farm
programs for, I will bet, three or four decades. They have been
ineffective caps because there has been legal subterfuge to get around
it.
The underlying bill, as well as our amendment, takes care of some of
that legal subterfuge. But we maintain one for loan deficiency payments
within this bill. So you, consequently, don't have a hard cap. Some
people would say you don't have a cap at all. I will not go that far.
But it is one gigantic opportunity for people to get payments that are
really not limited. And it is particularly important for big farmers
because the loan deficiency payment is paid out so much per bushel for
what the market price is under the target price. So the more bushels
you produce, the larger the farm, the more deficiency payments you are
going to get. Consequently, we are trying to stop subsidizing farmers
from getting bigger.
But when the loan deficiency payment is left out, you are going to
give these farmers the same opportunity they have under existing law to
use a legal subterfuge that basically makes the limits less meaningful.
So I hope you will consider whether you think, when we have a cap, it
ought to be an effective cap and, in the words of Dorgan-Grassley, a
hard cap. It is very important that we do that.
Remember the background for the farm safety net. It is to help
medium- and small-sized farmers, to protect them against things beyond
their own control. And natural disaster is a natural one to speak about
because floods and hail and windstorms and inability because of a wet
spring to get the crop in, et cetera, et cetera, are all natural
disasters that a farmer cannot do anything about. Only God can do
something about natural disasters.
Then there are political decisions. I keep mentioning them because
they ruined so many farmers in the 1970s. Nixon put a freeze on beef
prices, and the President also put a limit on exports of soybeans so
the price would plummet when it was very high in the early 1970s. And
there is international politics: the cost of energy, what OPEC does--
all of that is beyond the control of the small- and medium-sized
farmers.
But the larger you get, the more staying power you have in it, and we
don't need to have a safety net so strong that it subsidizes big
farmers to get bigger, and 10 percent of the biggest farmers are
getting 73 percent of the benefits out of the farm program.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia is recognized.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, how much time remains on our side?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 1\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Senator Grassley said a little earlier that the
payment limit provision increased the land prices or contributed to the
increase in land prices in his State. I simply say that I understand
they have risen 64 percent from 2000. I remember very well, in 2002,
when we were drafting the farm bill, the price of corn was $1.90 a
bushel. Today, the price is $3.16 a bushel in Iowa, and in Texas it is
about $3.85 a bushel. It is pretty easy to see why the price of land in
the midwestern part of the United States increased. It has nothing to
do with payment limits and everything to do with crops.
By contrast, in the mid-1950s, cotton was selling at 55 cents a
pound. Today, a pound of cotton is selling somewhere in the range of 62
cents, and it is up. That is a pretty drastic contrast.
My colleagues have said it is their position that farmers simply get
too much money, and we need to cap payments. I think it is interesting
to note that we tried to put a cap on conservation payments, and we
were stymied from doing it in the committee.
There is nothing in the Grassley-Dorgan amendment to put any payment
limit on the conservation payments that are made. The conservation
payments that are made, I daresay, are virtually all of the payments to
which the Senator from North Dakota referred. I urge colleagues to vote
no on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
Mr. DORGAN. How much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 12 minutes remaining.
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, to suggest that perhaps we believe that
farmers were getting too much money, nothing could be further from the
truth. A whole lot of farmers are not getting enough help when they
need it. The reason is because we don't have enough money in the farm
program to provide a decent safety net. We have money leaking out the
back door in the form of millions of dollars of payments to big
corporate agrifactories. I have some examples. We have all heard these
and read about them.
Constance Bowles, a prominent San Francisco art collector, from 2003
to 2005 received $1.2 million. Her husband received an equivalent
amount during that period. Mark Burkett, a bonafide farmer, received
payments for corn, wheat, cotton, peanuts, and sorghum from 2003 to
2005 totaling $1.8 million. Tommy Dildine collected $1.04 million. By
the way, his wife Betty received exactly the same amount down to the
penny. That is just over $2 million for that couple. I could go on.
Is this a safety net helping family farmers? I don't think so. There
is nothing, as I indicated previously, in this legislation that stops
some of the practices I described earlier.
My colleague said this issue of cowboy starter kits--I am tired
hearing about cowboy starter kits. The USDA can shut that down. Yes,
they can, but they won't. Why wouldn't we shut down a loophole that
says somebody

[[Page S15215]]

who has never farmed and never will farm and living on land that hasn't
produced a crop for 20 years ought to open the mailbox and get a check
from the Federal Government, a farm program payment? Why wouldn't we
close that loophole? Why? Because this bill doesn't go far enough and
won't close it and those who are opposing us on the floor of the Senate
today don't want it closed.
There are a lot of reasons to support family farming. Some say it is
hopelessly old-fashioned, that farming has gone a different direction;
it is mechanized, it is big, these are big operators farming from
California to Maine. I believe it is not hopelessly old-fashioned to
think we can keep families on the farm putting in a crop and
contributing more than a crop, but contributing to building
communities. They are the economic blood vessels that flow into our
rural communities in our country.
There is a songwriter, a farmer, a rancher from North Dakota named
Chuck Suchy. He sings a song about ``Saturday Night at the Bohemian
Hall,'' where all the neighbors, all the farmers in the region gather
and talk about the weather, they talk about their crops, and they talk
about their families. It is an unusual culture and one that is
important to this country. Some say that is yesterday, it is certainly
not tomorrow. I, for one, hope we can construct a farm bill that is
about tomorrow and that says to family farmers living on the land: We
care about you. You are out there alone trying to make it against the
odds. So we have a safety net. But some of my colleagues believe that
safety net should be a set of golden arches, providing millions to the
biggest agrifactories in this country. That is not what the farm
program was designed to do.
When we do a program here, it doesn't mean it has to be perverted. We
don't need snow removal in Hawaii, we don't need beachfront restoration
in North Dakota, and we don't need to pervert a farm program by
allowing millions of dollars--and, by the way, since the year 2000,
$1.3 billion has been spent by this Federal Government in crop
subsidies to people who are not farming--$1.3 billion. What might that
have done in the form of health care for children who don't have health
care or strengthening education so that when kids walk through a
classroom door, we can believe they are walking into one of the best
classrooms in the world? What might that have done in a whole range of
areas where we could have improved life? What might that have done had
that money gone in to strengthening the farm program itself or
providing a disaster provision 2, 3 years ago for a farm program that
doesn't have it?
Madam President, how much remains on my time?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 7 minutes remaining.
Mr. DORGAN. Again, I know some think it is hopelessly old-fashioned
to talk about family farms. I don't. I know some farms have been very
successful and they have grown, and I don't mean at all they should be
penalized. That is not my intention. We only have a certain amount of
money, and we ought to provide the best safety net and farm program we
can up to a certain amount of production because that is the money we
have. But we ought not dissipate our energy, strength, and money on
people who are not farming and they go to their mailbox and open a
check, and they get a farm program payment even if they don't farm.
That does not make sense to me.
Let me tell a story about a young man named Waylon. I was invited to
the White House to the East Room some while ago when they brought in
some youngsters who were heroes and the President presented these
youngsters with medals. One of them was a North Dakotan. Twelve-year-
old Waylon was on the farm with his brother and sister. His parents
went to a neighbor farm for a moment to see the neighbors. It was
winter, and in North Dakota in the winter, the stock pond was frozen.
They were playing on the ice. This 12-year-old boy and his brother and
sister were playing on the stock pond ice and his sister fell through
the ice. It cracked and she fell through the ice and was drowning.
Waylon, age 12, sent his brother to go 1 mile to fetch his parents.
His 6-year-old brother went off to fetch the parents. Waylon, age 12,
meanwhile lay on his belly with his winter clothes on and cowboy boots
toward the edge of the hole on the ice where his sister was drowning.
Some while later, about 20 minutes later, his parents came rushing
into the yard, driving into the yard. What they saw was a 12-year-old
boy in this area where the ice had broken who couldn't swim, who broke
into that ice trying to find his sister who was drowning. What his
parents saw was a young 12-year-old boy with his sister's head in the
crook of his arm. He was treading water as fast as he could tread still
20 minutes later.
He was given a medal for heroism at the White House along with some
other boys. I asked young Waylon: How did you do that? He said I
watched ``GI Joe'' and I learned safety tips. He said: I kicked as hard
as I could. He kicked so hard that his cowboy boots came off. On that
day, a 12-year-old boy who couldn't swim reached out his hand for his
sister who was drowning.

That same type of love, that kind of commitment, that outreach of a
hand, not just from that 12-year-old boy, but from a country to farmers
all across this country to say, let us help you when you are in
trouble--that is the instinct of this country and why we created a
safety net in the first place, to reach out our hands to say we want to
help, you are not alone when prices collapse, when disease comes, when
it hails, when it rains, when it rains too much, when it doesn't rain
enough. This country has said we want to help because we believe family
farmers are important to this country. We want people on Saturday night
to come to the Bohemian Hall and swap stories about the weather, the
crops, and their neighbors. We want that. The way you get that, it
seems to me, is to preserve a safety net. We will not preserve a safety
net for family farmers by deciding we ought to give millions and
millions of dollars to the biggest agrifactories in this country that
are farming the farm program.
When we give $1.3 billion in farm program payments to people who are
not farming--let me say that again--when we send checks to the
mailboxes of people who are not farming to the tune of $1.3 billion and
call it a safety net in a farm program, I am saying it is a perversion
of what we ought to do as a government to help family farmers in the
future.
This ought not be a difficult choice. The committee made some
improvements in this bill; yes, they did. But without this amendment,
we will still have people who are not farming now and have never farmed
in the past and will never farm in the future living on land that has
not produced a crop for 20 years, and they are going to continue to get
farm program payments. If you don't believe that is wrong, then vote
against this amendment.
Senator Grassley and I believe there is a much better way. We don't
do it by suggesting anybody at all should ever be penalized. We just
believe we should use the resources we have to provide the best safety
net we can to those family farms out there struggling to try to make
ends meet during tough times. That is why we have a farm program. It is
why we designed a safety net. It has not worked as well as any of us
would have liked.
I would like to improve the safety net, but we can't improve the
safety net if we are using this precious money to send it to Telegraph
Hill in San Francisco to somebody who gets $2.4 million with her
husband, a patron of the arts, who gets money from the farm program and
whose brother now runs the farm and says: I don't know why we get this
money, but if they get it down in Texas, we ought to get it here in San
Francisco.
I am telling you, the American people expect more from us. Let me
finish by saying this again. I deeply respect my colleagues who
disagree with me. I respect my colleagues who have spoken in support of
their bill and against this amendment. But I say to them, if they are
for constructive change, if they are for reform that the American
people understand makes sense, then they have to support this amendment
and believe let's at least do the right thing.
This is a good bill that came out of the committee, but it needs to
have this hole plugged. To have a bill come out of the committee and
have loan deficiency payments or the marketing

[[Page S15216]]

loan be totally unlimited for the biggest farm in America for
everything they ever will produce, that is wrong. It is a hole big
enough to drive a truck through. If we can fix that, I say we have done
a good day's work and done something very important for family farmers
in the future.
One of my colleagues says, if we do this, he won't vote for the bill.
I am going to vote for the bill one way or the other because this bill
is an advancement in public policy. But Senator Grassley has said it
well, my colleague Ben Nelson and others believe as I do that we should
do this, we should have done this 6 years ago. And by the way, we had
66 Senators vote for this approach the last time we wrote a farm bill,
and it got dropped in conference. My hope is we will at least have 60
votes tomorrow in support of change, constructive reform that the
American people want. If you went to a cafe anyplace in this country,
set this out and said: What do you think we should do? I tell you it
will be 99 percent saying fix this, fix this, do this in support of the
American taxpayers, and do this in support of family farmers.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

Amendment No. 3551

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there is now 2
minutes for debate equally divided prior to vote on amendment No. 3551,
the amendment offered by the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander.
Who yields time?
The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask the manager of the bill if he
wishes us to begin our 1-minute discussion?
Mr. HARKIN. Go ahead.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this is a wonderful opportunity to
take wasteful Washington spending and turn it into higher farm family
income by using our secret weapon, land grant universities' competitive
grants to create value-added agricultural products to get that program
back on track. It is fully paid for, $74 million, by striking a
provision that uses taxpayers' dollars so taxpayers in Virginia and
Georgia, for example, will pay for transmission lines in Tennessee and
other States. Those should be paid for by utilities.
The group that hopes Senators vote ``yes'' includes the National
Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, the National
Coalition for Food and Agricultural Research, the National Association
of Wheat Growers, and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
I urge a ``yes'' vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Who yields time in opposition?
The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I hope the Senate will reject these
Alexander amendments. The first one on transmission easement payments,
again, if we want to encourage the building of renewable energy
resources, they are going to take place in rural areas. These easements
they have to get have to take place on farms and rural areas.
I was pleased the Finance Committee in their tax package provided
this income exclusion for transmission easement payments because it can
help support transmission access development and it does it for
renewable energy. So this is part of the tax package that came from the
Finance Committee supported both by the Finance Committee and the
Agriculture Committee.
If you want renewable resources built in rural America, then this
amendment should be defeated because it will slow it down and stop it
from happening.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 3551.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden),
the Senator from New York (Mrs. Clinton), the Senator from Connecticut
(Mr. Dodd), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), and the Senator
from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily absent.
I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from New
Jersey (Mr. Menendez) would vote ``nay.''
Mr. LOTT. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 19, nays 75, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 420 Leg.]

YEAS--19

Alexander
Allard
Bennett
Bond
Bunning
Burr
Cochran
Dole
Graham
Hutchison
Kyl
McConnell
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Specter
Sununu
Voinovich
Warner

NAYS--75

Akaka
Barrasso
Baucus
Bayh
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown
Brownback
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Chambliss
Coburn
Coleman
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
DeMint
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Ensign
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Harkin
Hatch
Inhofe
Inouye
Isakson
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lott
Lugar
Martinez
McCaskill
Mikulski
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Roberts
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Smith
Stabenow
Stevens
Tester
Thune
Vitter
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--6

Biden
Clinton
Dodd
McCain
Menendez
Obama
The amendment (No. 3551) was rejected.

Amendment No. 3553

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2
minutes of debate prior to a vote on amendment No. 3553, offered by the
Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander.
The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the words I would like my colleagues
to remember are ``farms, yes; residential, no.'' If the Alexander
amendment is adopted, there would be subsidies for wind turbines up to
12 stories tall in agricultural areas, but there would be no subsidies
for wind turbines in residential areas. This is called ``small wind.''
Twelve stories is not very tall, but I would not want to go home and
explain to my constituents why I took their tax dollars and helped a
neighbor build a 12-story-tall wind turbine with flashing lights in a
residential neighborhood.
Farms, yes; residential, no. I ask for a ``yes'' vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado is recognized.
Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I ask my colleagues to vote no on the
Alexander amendment. The Alexander amendment would essentially strip
out what came out as a bipartisan supported amendment from both the
Finance Committee and the Agriculture Committee. It is a step in the
right direction in terms of moving forward with small wind
microturbines that are very essential to our renewable energy future.
This is something which is part of our whole renewable energy agenda.
I urge my colleagues to vote against the Alexander amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No.
3553.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a
sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden),
the Senator from New York (Mrs. Clinton), the Senator from Connecticut
(Mr. Dodd), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), and the Senator
from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily absent.
I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from New
Jersey (Mr. Menendez) would vote ``nay.''
Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Arizona (Mr. McCain) and the

[[Page S15217]]

Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 14, nays 79, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 421 Leg.]

YEAS--14

Alexander
Bennett
Bond
Bunning
Cochran
DeMint
Dole
Domenici
Kyl
Lott
McConnell
Sessions
Shelby
Warner

NAYS--79

Akaka
Allard
Barrasso
Baucus
Bayh
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown
Brownback
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Chambliss
Coburn
Coleman
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
Dorgan
Durbin
Ensign
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Harkin
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Inouye
Isakson
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lugar
Martinez
McCaskill
Mikulski
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Roberts
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Smith
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Stevens
Sununu
Tester
Thune
Vitter
Voinovich
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--7

Biden
Burr
Clinton
Dodd
McCain
Menendez
Obama
The amendment (No. 3553) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2
minutes of debate equally divided prior to a vote on amendment No. 3673
offered by the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Gregg.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the proper
order for the 2 minutes? Is there a tradition or an order on the 2
minutes?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no order of speakers. There is 2
minutes equally divided.
Mr. GREGG. Thank you.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
If no one yields time, the time will be charged equally to both
sides.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, obviously the Senator from New Hampshire
does not want to explain his amendment. I will. This is a medical
malpractice amendment on a farm bill. This amendment picks a class of
Americans who will be denied their day in court and restricted in what
they can recover if they are victims of medical malpractice.
The people who will be denied their day in court, a class, women,
women living in towns of 20,000 of population or less, and their
children, those are the only people who will be denied the right to go
to court.
If you think this is wise policy for America, to say to victims of
medical malpractice who live in small towns they cannot go before the
court and jury for fair compensation for their injuries, then I assume
you will support this amendment.
But if you believe the medical malpractice does not belong in the
farm bill, should not specify one class of Americans to be
discriminated against and that we should give those victims a chance
for their day in court, please vote no.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator
from Illinois in going first. Let me simply make this point. This is
not a complicated amendment. In rural America today, there is a
distinct lack of obstetricians. Women who are going to have children
are having a very serious problem finding doctors who can take care of
them.
That is because of the cost of malpractice insurance. This bill
tracks the Texas experience and the California experience and is a very
reasonable approach. You have a simple choice in this bill on this
amendment. You can vote for women who need decent health care when they
are having children or you can vote for trial lawyers. That is the
choice. I would appreciate it if people voted for women. Thank you.
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 3673.
The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden),
the Senator from New York (Mrs. Clinton), the Senator from Connecticut
(Mr. Dodd), the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), and the Senator
from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily absent.
I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from
Delaware (Mr. Biden) and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez)
would each vote ``nay.''
Mr. LOTT. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 41, nays 53, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 422 Leg.]

YEAS--41

Alexander
Allard
Barrasso
Bennett
Bond
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Coburn
Cochran
Coleman
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
DeMint
Dole
Domenici
Ensign
Enzi
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Kyl
Lott
Lugar
McConnell
Murkowski
Roberts
Sessions
Smith
Stevens
Sununu
Thune
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner

NAYS--53

Akaka
Baucus
Bayh
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Chambliss
Conrad
Crapo
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Graham
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Martinez
McCaskill
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Shelby
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Tester
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--6

Biden
Clinton
Dodd
McCain
Menendez
Obama
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 41, the nays are
53. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of
this amendment, the amendment is withdrawn.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and move to
lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, the managers have made a lot of progress on
this bill today. The end is in sight. We are going to have a couple
more votes tonight. There will be a little more debate tonight.
So I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be debated
tonight for the time limits specified in the order listed and that all
other provisions of the previous order remain in effect regarding time
division and intervening amendments: Sessions amendment No. 3596, 20
minutes evenly divided; Coburn amendment No. 3632, 20 minutes evenly
divided; that the Klobuchar amendment be debated tonight for whatever
time she may consume of her 30 minutes--she has 30 minutes; whoever
opposes the amendment will have 30 minutes; they are going to debate
part of that time tomorrow--Senator Klobuchar will use whatever time
she feels appropriate tonight within her 30 minutes but the vote occur
in relation to the amendment during Thursday's session; that upon the
conclusion of the debate with respect to the Klobuchar amendment, the
Senate proceed to vote in relation to amendment No. 3596 and then
amendment No. 3632--I am sorry, the debate on the Klobuchar amendment
will begin after we complete the votes tonight on the two amendments I
mentioned--that the following two amendments be debated during
tomorrow's session: Senator Brown will have 60 minutes on amendment No.
3819, evenly divided; Senator Tester will have 60 minutes evenly
divided on amendment No. 3666.
So in effect, we are going to have debate for a relatively short
period of time, and they will yield back their time if they wish. We
will have two votes. Senator Klobuchar will start her debate tonight
and use whatever of her 30 minutes she desires, and then tomorrow we
will have a number of

[[Page S15218]]

amendments, but locked in is the Brown amendment and the Tester
amendment, as I outlined.
I have spoken to Senator Harkin. He, of course, is in touch often
with Senator Chambliss. There is every possibility we could finish this
bill tomorrow. As everyone knows, we have some votes in the morning on
the Dorgan-Grassley amendment and on cloture on the Energy bill.
After that, we will have to see what happens and try to get back to
this bill as quickly as we can.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, if I
could ask the distinguished majority leader to add the other unanimous
consent request we have agreed to.
Mr. REID. Yes. I did not have that.

Amendment No. 3803 to Amendment No. 3500

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 3803, which
is at the desk, be considered and agreed to, and the motion to
reconsider be laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request, as
modified?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment (No. 3803) was agreed to, as follows:

(Purpose: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide for the
tax treatment of horses, and for other purposes)

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. _. ASSET TREATMENT OF HORSES.

(a) 3-Year Depreciation for All Race Horses.--
(1) In general.--Clause (i) of section 168(e)(3)(A) of the
Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (relating to 3-year property)
is amended to read as follows:
``(i) any race horse,''.
(2) Effective date.--The amendment made by this section
shall apply to property placed in service on or after the
date of the enactment of this Act.
(b) Reduction of Holding Period to 12 Months for Purposes
of Determining Whether Horses Are Section 1231 Assets.--
(1) In general.--Subparagraph (A) of section 1231(b)(3) of
the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (relating to definition of
livestock) is amended by striking ``and horses''.
(2) Effective date.--The amendment made by this section
shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31,
2007.

SEC. _. ELIMINATION OF PRIVATE PAYMENT TEST FOR PROFESSIONAL
SPORTS FACILITY BONDS.

(a) In General.--Section 141(a) (defining private activity
bond) is amended by adding at the end the following new flush
sentence:

``In the case of any professional sports facility bond,
paragraph (1) shall be applied without regard to subparagraph
(B) thereof.''.
(b) Professional Sports Facility Bond Defined.--Section 141
is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
``(f) Professional Sports Facility Bond.--For purposes of
subsection (a)--
``(1) In general.--The term `professional sports facility
bond' means any bond issued as part of an issue any portion
of the proceeds of which are to be used to provide a
professional sports facility.
``(2) Professional sports facility.--The term `professional
sports facility' means real property and related improvements
used, in whole or in part, for professional sports,
professional sports exhibitions, professional games, or
professional training.''.
(c) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section
shall apply to bonds issued after the date of the enactment
of this Act, other than bonds with respect to which a
resolution was issued by an issuer or conduit borrower before
January 24, 2007.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

____________________