[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 85 (Thursday, May 22, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4743-S4755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FOOD, CONSERVATION, AND ENERGY ACT OF 2008--VETO--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will
report the veto message on H.R. 2419.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Veto message to accompany H.R. 2419, entitled an Act to
provide for the continuation of agricultural programs through
fiscal year 2012, and for other purposes.
Mr. HARKIN. Parliamentary inquiry: I understand under the agreement,
we each have 7\1/2\ minutes; that Senator Gregg has 15 minutes; and the
two leaders have reserved 15 minutes each?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, again for Senators and those staff who are
watching, now we are on the override of the veto of the farm bill
conference report we passed here last week.
To remind everyone, that bill, as you know, passed here
overwhelmingly 81 to 15, a remarkable margin for a farm bill. It was
widely supported on both sides of the aisle and by regions of the
country, so we were very pleased with that outcome and that vote.
Of course it had passed the House with 318 votes; so again a very
strong vote on the bill. It went to the President. We were hoping that
maybe he would not veto it, but the President did exercise his
constitutional right and he vetoed the bill.
The farm bill came back to the House yesterday and the House overrode
the veto 316 to 108. So basically what we have before us is exactly
what we voted on last week and approved with 81 votes but for one
thing: The farm bill is missing a title.
Let me try to be as succinct as I can in this. What happened is when
the enrolling clerk on the House side enrolled the bill and sent it to
the President, the clerk did not put in title III, which includes the
several Department of Agriculture trade programs and food assistance
programs for foreign countries, mainly the P.L. 480, Food for Peace
Program, the delivery of which goes through USAID, and other programs.
So the President vetoed the enrolled bill which is missing that title.
Well, I know Senator Chambliss and I and others have had numerous phone
calls and conversations with Parliamentarians and others to figure this
out. The enrolled bill is properly attested to and fully effective and
valid as to all of the provisions it contains. We will have to enact
title III in another legislative measure. Again, I remind everyone, its
omission was inadvertent. It was an innocent mistake; maybe
inexcusable, but nevertheless an innocent mistake that title III was
dropped out.
But for that title III, everything else in this bill is exactly what
we approved with 81 votes. So I am here to ask Members to vote to
override the President's veto and to make this bill the law of the land
in accordance with the overwhelming wishes of both the Senate and the
House.
This bill is a good bill, as I said earlier. It responds to needs all
over this country, from farmers and small towns and rural areas to
Americans in urban areas. The largest part of the bill is nutrition and
food assistance. Over two-thirds of the total spending in this bill
goes to nutrition. This bill does more to strengthen Federal food
assistance than any bill we have passed since George Herbert Walker
Bush was the President.
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This bill does a lot for food assistance for low-income people.
Basically all the added money above the budget baseline that we put
into this bill goes for nutrition. We increase the food supplies to
food banks. Our Nation's food banks are getting hit pretty hard. We put
$1.2 billion into supplying them with more food. I might add, one of
the reasons we must enact this bill in a hurry is because food banks
are hurting. As soon as this bill becomes law with this override, $50
million will get out immediately to our food pantries and food banks
across the country.
We also in this bill, as you know, provided more money to help
growers of specialty crops, fruits and vegetables, than we ever have
before. We include in this legislation a higher level of funding than
in any previous farm bill for helping farmers and ranchers in
conserving our natural resources, saving soil, cleaning up our water
and our streams, protecting wildlife habitat.
Look at it this way: Of the combined total spending in this bill on
commodity and conservation programs, 41 percent of that total is
devoted to conservation. That is slightly more than double the highest
percentage share for conservation in any previous farm bill.
The rural development title helps rural communities through a number
of new initiatives, including a stronger broadband program, and by
devoting mandatory funding for water and wastewater systems to fund
some of the tremendous backlog of qualified applications that are on
hold.
We have in this bill several important initiatives and improvements
in programs to help beginning farmers. We improve the farm income
protection system in various ways, including for dairy farmers, yet
attain budget savings in the title of the bill covering commodity
programs. We have a new option in here, a new reform, called the
Average Crop Revenue Election, or ACRE, Program. This is going to be
very significant for farmers to be able to choose whether to stay under
the current farm program or do they go to the new program of income
protection based on revenue.
I read the editorial in the Washington Post this morning and, of
course, they have never editorially, as far as I know, ever supported a
farm bill, at least in my time here. I have to take exception to one
thing they said in the editorial this morning. They are talking about
the ACRE Program, claiming how it will be some kind of boondoggle for
farmers. They say here:
[It] means farmers would get paid if prices fall back to
the historical and, for farmers, perfectly profitable norms.
If the prices that our Nation's farmers receive for their grain and
other commodities fall back to what the Washington Post calls
``historical norms,'' we will have tremendous economic hardship in the
countryside. Here is why I say that: What the Post is missing is that
from 2002 to 2009, the production costs for farmers have skyrocketed.
The gasoline prices we are paying at the pump, farmers have got to pay
even more for the diesel fuel for their tractors, for their combines.
For example, fertilizer costs for producing corn are up 141 percent in
7 years. From 2002 to 2009, the cost of production for corn is up 22
percent; soybeans up 28 percent; wheat up 28 percent.
Now, if prices, God forbid, should fall to the levels they were
before 2002, farmers will be wiped out all over this country. We will
have bankruptcies and families forced out of farming on a huge scale.
That is why we have the ACRE Program to reflect the new realities,
the new realities of what farmers have to pay for their fertilizer,
their fuel, their equipment, their land. All of these expenses have
gone up tremendously. We need a program that helps farmers deal with
those higher costs and potential volatility in market prices for
commodities, and that is why we put this new program in. It is a
reform. It is one of the features of this bill that I believe will help
family farms survive in America. So, again, this is a good, solid bill,
the same bill we voted on last week minus title III, which we will
enact later.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, as my chairman said, I think everything
that could be said about this bill has been said. We were on the floor
off and on for a couple of weeks, and we, at the end of the day, after
a lot of controversial votes and whatnot, achieved a milestone in the
Senate for farm bills; that is, we had 81 Members of the Senate who
voted in favor of this bill. It is not a perfect bill, but it is a very
good bill for any number of reasons.
In the commodity title, we are spending significantly less money on
our so-called subsidy program. I refer to it as an investment by the
Government in agriculture, because that is exactly what it is. We are
not guaranteeing farmers any kind of income. In fact, under the way
this bill is written, the prices being what they are at the farm gate
today, very little, if any, in the way of payments is going to be going
from Washington to farmers. That is the way it ought to be. That is the
way farmers want it. They would rather get the stream of income from
the marketplace. Certainly that is the way we, as policymakers, want to
see it happen. That is what will happen.
We have made significant changes in the payment limit provision. We
have AGIs in this bill now that have never been thought of before.
Nobody ever thought we would achieve the number we did from an AGI
standpoint. But it is real reform. It is going to work.
We are also eliminating the three-entity rule. Again, if you had told
anybody in this distinguished Senate 3 years ago that we would be
eliminating the three-entity rule in the farm bill, you would have
gotten blank stares. Nobody ever thought that would happen, but we were
willing to make those kinds of reforms.
In the conservation title, we have expanded a number of programs, but
we have done something significant in the conservation title. For the
first time ever we are applying payment limits to the conservation
title. So the so-called millionaires that have been beneficiaries of
the conservation title in years past are no longer going to be able to
participate in that program, and they should not.
I am pretty excited about the energy title. In my part of the world,
we do not grow corn with the abundance that the Midwest part of the
country does. Therefore, we are a little bit handicapped when it comes
to the construction and manufacturing facilities to produce ethanol.
Because out of the 201 ethanol-producing facilities that are in place
or will be in place over the next 18 months, all but 2 of them are
resourced with corn. The two that are not resourced with corn happen to
be resourced with cellulosic products. One of them is in my State.
I am very proud of the fact that we are going to have a facility in
Soperton, GA, that is under construction right now by Range Fuels that
is going to produce ethanol from pine trees, because I will match our
ability to grow a pine tree with anybody else in the country. It is a
resource that is not going to increase the cost of food, which is an
unintended consequence of the use of corn for the production of
ethanol.
The title I am just as excited about is the nutrition title. We are
seeing an expansion of the nutrition title again like none of us ever
imagined we would see in this farm bill. Most people across America
think because of what they read in the Washington Post and the Wall
Street Journal and the Atlanta Constitution that farm bills are
strictly payments to farmers when, in fact, about 11 percent of the
outlays in this bill go to the commodity title which goes to farmers.
About 73 percent of the outlays in this bill go to the nutrition
title to provide for the food stamp program, to provide for the school
lunch program, to provide for payments to our food banks. All of those
programs are designed to feed people who are hungry and needy in this
country. We are the most abundant country in the world from an
agricultural standpoint. We have the ability to feed people inside of
America as well as outside of America, and we have an obligation to do
that. In the nutrition title, that is exactly what we are going to be
doing.
This is a bill that has been talked about an awful lot. And, again,
it is not a perfect bill. There are some provisions in it that I wish
were not in it. But it is a massive piece of legislation, as is every
farm bill, and we have to reach compromise to be able to get a bill of
that massive size passed by the House and by the Senate.
[[Page S4745]]
We did accommodate the White House. We negotiated very diligently
with the White House. We moved a long way in the direction of the White
House. They did not get everything they wanted, and we did not get
everything we wanted. At the end of the day, we passed it with a big
vote. And the White House, unfortunately, decided we did not move far
enough for them. Obviously that caused the President's veto to the
bill. At the end of the day here today, we are going to have at least
14 of the 15 titles hopefully passed into law.
I do not know what happened to the one title. They tell us that a
clerk on the House side failed to include 33 pages of title III in the
bill that was transmitted from the House to the White House.
Those things happen. Now it is up to us to figure out the best way to
efficiently and in an expeditious manner fix the problem and move ahead
to allow farmers and ranchers to have some certainty as they move into
the planting season of 2008.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Salazar). Who yields time?
The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand I have 15 minutes under the
prior order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are here to vote on the override of some
portion of the farm bill which the President has vetoed. First, there
is the great irony that the bill we are voting on isn't the bill that
passed the Senate or the House. It is some element of that bill, other
parts of the bill having not made it to the President. That sort of
becomes an allegory for this entire exercise. This is a bill that
really doesn't do the job it should, is incomplete in the sense that it
fails the American taxpayer and consumer, and is misguided in that it
spends a great deal of money, perverting the marketplace relative to
the production of agricultural products. But we are here because of
what was a bureaucratic snafu, I presume.
We all know the President's veto is going to be overridden, but the
President was right to veto this bill. He was absolutely right. I said
earlier--I know my colleagues take this in the sense of irony with
which I make it, not in any personal way--this bill truly is a product
of commissar politics, of the old approach that we saw years ago in
countries that thought that they could have a top-down management of
their farm production system.
I said in my earlier talk, where did all the economists who worked in
the Soviet Union go, all those folks who sat behind desks and thought
about 5-year plans and how to disconnect supply from demand and how to
set arbitrary prices which caused the Soviet Union, a nation which was
one of the great producers of agricultural products, to become
basically a net importer of product? Where did all those economists go
when the Soviet Union failed? It appears they moved to the Midwest and
the South and developed our farm programs.
These programs have no relationship to the market or setting prices
for commodities, which are basically totally out of tune with the
market. They have no relationship to market forces. As a result, the
American consumer ends up with a much higher bill and the short end of
the stick.
Take sugar alone. Sugar prices in this bill are at least twice the
world price for sugar. So the American consumer ends up getting hit for
a much higher cost for any product that uses sugar. And just about any
food commodity of any complexity uses sugar.
In addition, you have the huge effort to subsidize ethanol, which has
driven up dramatically the price of corn and has the effect of
basically creating an international incident in the area of food
availability. We are hearing from numerous countries around the world
that are finding they have shortages of other commodities because the
American subsidization of ethanol has perverted the marketplace
relative to the production of corn. That certainly is inappropriate. So
the policy of this bill is not only an attack on the American consumer,
it is basically bad policy for the world population just trying to make
it through and avoid hunger.
In addition, this bill sets up all sorts of new programs, programs
which make no sense on their face but which are in here because they
have somebody who is protecting their initiatives, their ideas, their
purposes. We have a new program for asparagus, a new program for
chickpeas, an initiative for a National Sheep and Goat Industry
Improvement Center, a new program that creates a stress management
network for farmers. Then, according to the Washington Post--and I was
not aware of this--there is the potential for a $16 billion boondoggle
for agricultural products because of the new way that prices are set
and payments are made, setting prices at their present high level,
setting subsidy rates at their present high level under this new
program called ACRE.
I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the editorial of
today's Washington Post which does a much better job than I of
explaining how outrageous this new subsidy is and how much it will cost
the American consumer, $16 billion.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, May 22, 2008]
Pasture of Plenty: You Thought You Knew How Bad the Farm Bill Was
``Life is like a box of chocolates,'' Forrest Gump's mother
used to say. ``You never know what you're going to get.'' The
same could be said of federal agricultural legislation.
Arcane and often irrational, its subsidy provision can be
difficult to understand and, sometimes, even difficult to
identify. Even after Congress passed a subsidy-riddled 673-
page farm bill last week, with a price tag conservatively set
at $289 billion, it was not entirely clear just how big a
burden lawmakers had imposed on taxpayers. Now, however, the
fine print is coming into focus, and--surprise!--the bill
could authorize up to $16 billion more in crop subsidies than
previously projected, according to the Agriculture
Department.
The culprit is a new program called Average Crop Revenue
Election, or ACRE for short. ACRE gives farmers an
alternative to direct payments, which come regardless of how
much money they make, and other subsidies. Starting in 2009,
farmers can choose to trade in some of their traditional
subsidies in return for a government promise to make up 90
percent of the difference between what they actually made
from farming and their usual income. In principle, this
provides farmers a federal safety net only in those years
when prices or yields fall drastically--that is, when they
really need one. Congress added the optional ACRE program to
the bill as a sop to reformers who, sensibly, wanted to
replace the current subsidy system with a simpler insurance-
style program. Such a wholesale change would, indeed, have
been a real reform. But since the farm bill continued direct
payments and other old-style subsidies, no one expected huge
numbers of farmers to volunteer for the new ACRE deal.
Then farmers got a look at the bill's formula for
determining benefits under ACRE. It pegs the subsidies to
current, record-high prices for grain, meaning farmers would
get paid if prices fall back to their historical and, for
farmers, perfectly profitable norms. A program that started
out as streamlined insurance policy against extraordinary
hardship has mutated into a possible guarantee of
extraordinary prosperity. Small wonder that, as The Post's
Dan Morgan reports, a farming blog is urging farmers to sign
up for ACRE, which it describes as ``lucrative beyond
expectations.''
The farm bill's defenders insist that a budgetary disaster
will not come to pass, because grain prices will not come
down much during the five years the bill will be in effect.
``The program does not look excessively expensive for the
lifetime of the farm bill,'' said Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte
(Va.), the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture
Committee. In other words, even if they don't have to pay
extra for ACRE, Americans will have to pay higher food
prices--so they may as well get used to it. None of the
legislators who rushed to override President Bush's veto of
the bill yesterday will have the decency to blush the next
time they pontificate about fiscal responsibility. But we can
only wonder what other expensive surprise still lurk within
this profoundly wasteful legislation.
Mr. GREGG. This bill has a lot of substantive problems. It probably
will aggravate food consumption for nations around the world, their
ability to produce product, and certainly dramatically increase the
cost of product in the United States. It perverts the marketplace so a
product that might be produced more efficiently would not be produced
more efficiently. It spends a heck of a lot of money, $289 billion.
As we have seen, once again, it uses all sorts of budget gimmicks--
when it was originally passed, and it will have to be replaced, or
parts of it will because of the bureaucratic snafu--to get around the
rules of the Senate and the
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House, for that matter, in the area of trying to discipline spending.
There is $18 billion worth of budget gimmicks in this bill.
Then we just had a new budget avoidance exercise when the chairman of
the Budget Committee declared that the new baseline under a new
budget--this bill would have violated the original baseline, as was in
that new budget--will now be adjusted so this bill would not violate
that baseline--another exercise, unfortunately, in gaming the pay-go
rules. The budget chairman has a right to do that, but it cannot be
denied that is an effort to try to get around pay-go rules, as they
should be applied under the budget we will be passing the week after
next. So there is 18 billion dollars' worth of budget gimmicks in this
bill; the worst, of course, the changing of years and the assumption
that some program, which we know is going to continue, will terminate
at an arbitrary date so that you can spend the money up to that date
and claim there is no budget failure and, then, later on, adjust it,
put the program back in place, and avoid the budget pay-go rules--
really inappropriate, to say the least, in the way this has been
handled.
It is, of course, a bill that comes to the floor every 4 or 5 years.
But the problem is, every 4 or 5 years the American consumer gets
basically hit beside the head by this bill. Last time I spoke, I said
they get hit beside the head with a lamb chop and they end up with a
black eye the next day. As a result, I thought I would just stay away
from that statement. But the fact is, the American consumer isn't doing
very well under this bill. The American taxpayer is doing worse.
There is a claim that there is reform in this bill which is fairly
specious on its face, considering all the new programs added to the
bill, such as asparagus. One of the reforms they claim is that they are
not going to pay farmers who have high incomes outrageous subsidies.
Today you can get $2.5 million theoretically.
Well, unfortunately, the way the bill is structured, they say that,
but that is not the way it works. Under this bill, a person with
$500,000 of nonfarm income and $750,000 of farm income can still get
the subsidy. If they are married, their spouse can have $500,000 of
nonfarm income and $750,000 of farm income, so they end up basically
with approximately the same amount of subsidy. Yet it is alleged this
is some sort of major reform. It is not reform. It is simply an attempt
to obfuscate the fact that these subsidies go to extremely wealthy
people on products that should compete in the marketplace for a price
and should not be subsidized in the manner in which this bill
subsidizes.
Obviously, we are going to lose this vote because the way the farm
bill is put together--and the American people should know this--one
commodity goes to the next commodity and says: We will vote for your
commodity, even though it is in my State and not in yours, as long as
you will vote for my commodity which is in my State but not in yours.
You go around the country and you pick up commodities. That is why
asparagus has appeared here. Somebody in an asparagus district said: If
you will cover asparagus and give us a new subsidy, you will get my
vote for all the other subsidies in this bill.
That is the way it works. It is called log rolling. That is the
historical term that comes out of the 1800s. But it is not the way to
legislate. Certainly, it isn't a healthy way to legislate. It certainly
takes the concept of using the market completely out of the exercise of
developing a farm bill.
This farm bill runs counter to all the concepts of a free market
society from which this country has benefited so dramatically and which
we believe to be true and effective ways to produce product and control
costs and to make product more cost-effective for the people who use
it. Adam Smith was right; Karl Marx was wrong. Under this bill, one
would think Karl Marx was right and Adam Smith was wrong. This is top
down, let's manage the economy, let's set arbitrary prices that have no
relationship to production, supply, or demand in place of going to a
market where you use supply and demand to determine what will be
produced.
I suppose if Patrick Henry were around today, his famous statement
would have to be modified. He would have to say: Give me asparagus or
give me death. That is what this bill has come down to.
We either get these farm subsidies and get the consumer rolled and
the taxpayer rolled or we don't get anything around here.
As a practical matter, I, obviously, know I will lose this vote. The
President knew he was going to lose this vote when he vetoed the bill.
But he was absolutely right in doing so. It was the appropriate
decision. It was the fiscally responsible decision. It was also a good
decision from the standpoint of not only domestic policy but
international policy, where we are seeing strains on production of
commodities for the purposes of feeding people.
I regret we are going down this path one more time. We have been down
it a few times in the past. But the simple fact is, the forces that
support, for example, the sugar subsidy are too strong to be able to
give the taxpayers a break.
I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.
(Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Displays of approval or disapproval are not
appropriate from the galleries.
The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I understand the leader on this side has
15 minutes reserved; is that correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. HARKIN. I yield whatever time the Senator from North Dakota
desires from the leader's time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. CONRAD. Could the Chair alert me after I have consumed 10
minutes?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will be notified.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, we ought to get straight world agriculture
economics. The Senator from New Hampshire, for whom I have high regard,
has been a consistent opponent of a national agriculture policy, one
that has produced for our country the lowest priced food in world
history, measured by a share of our national income. Not only do we
have the lowest cost food in the history of the world as a share of our
income, we also have the safest supply, the most stable supply, the
most abundant supply. Something is working. Beyond that, he does not
deal with world agriculture as it is.
Our major competitors are the Europeans. We have about equal shares
of the world market. But here is what they do to support their
producers versus what we do to support ours. They are spending $134
billion to support their producers while we spend $43 billion. That is
more than a 3-to-1 ratio.
What happens if you pull the rug out from under our producers? Mass
bankruptcy. It is one thing to ask our producers to go up and compete
against the French farmer and the German farmer. They are happy to do
that. It is quite another issue to compete against the French
Government and the German Government as well. That is not a fair fight.
That is why it is essential we have a farm policy in this country.
Now, my colleague on the other side said a whole series of things
about the cost of this bill, the scoring of this bill, that are not so.
This administration has said this bill costs $20 billion more than the
baseline. No, it does not. According to the Congressional Budget
Office--that is independent, that is nonpartisan, that is
professional--this bill costs $10 billion above the baseline. End of
story. What the administration is talking about and what the Senator
from New Hampshire is talking about are fictional numbers based on
made-up scorekeeping that the administration has never applied to its
own legislation or budgets.
Under Congressional Budget Office scoring, our farm bill spends $10
billion baseline over the budget window. That is not my number; that is
the number from CBO, which is nonpartisan, professional, and
independent.
The $10 billion is offset with $10 billion in outlay reductions from
Customs user fees. Every penny of new spending is paid for.
On the tax side, we are paying for agriculture tax relief with
agriculture tax reforms, such as a reduction in the ethanol credit and
Schedule F reforms to limit the use of farming losses to
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shelter off-farm income. There is no tax increase.
The administration argues the farm bill contains timing shifts. That
is true. But that is also true of almost all major legislation dealing
with revenues or mandatory spending. That is what we do to true up the
numbers between the timeframes where various budget requirements are
imposed. The simple fact is, when you do major reform such as we are
doing in this bill, you change programs, you change payment schedules.
That is precisely what one would expect. These changes have real-world
consequences for farmers. They are making crop insurance payments
earlier, for example, under this bill, and getting farm program
payments later. That has a real-world cost.
The administration has repeatedly used timing shifts, itself, in
legislation it has proposed. In fact, the timing shifts in this bill
pale in comparison to the cost of sunsetting the tax cuts which the
President had in his tax packages repeatedly.
Now, in terms of where the money goes, 66 percent of the money in
this bill goes for nutrition--two-thirds. Nine percent goes for
conservation. Only 14 percent--actually, less than 14 percent--goes for
the so-called commodities. That is a dramatic reduction from the last
farm bill. In the last farm bill, three-quarters of 1 percent of the
Federal budget went to support commodities. In this bill, it is one-
quarter of 1 percent of the entire Federal budget going to support
farmers and ranchers. That is a dramatic change.
The Senator from New Hampshire mocked the reform elements in the
bill. They are not to be mocked. They are very real. We have a dramatic
reduction in the adjusted gross income limits that will apply in order
to qualify for farm program payments. One example: Nonfarm income used
to be a $2.5 million limit. It is reduced to $500,000 in this bill.
We require direct attribution in this bill. That means it has to be a
living, breathing human being collecting these payments; no paper
entities. We have eliminated the three-entity rule that was
consistently used to get around farm program limits. We have reduced
direct payments by $300 million. We have reformed Schedule F to prevent
the abusive use of nonoperating losses to shield nonfarm income--a
savings of over $450 million. We have crop insurance reform of over
$5.6 billion. We have decreased the corn ethanol support by $1.2
billion.
We have eliminated these so-called cowboy starter kits where people
down in certain States were selling farm and ranchland off as
subdivisions and having a farm program payment go with those lots,
those 10-acre lots. We brought a screeching halt to that abuse.
The disaster assistance in this bill is budgeted and paid for. In the
last 3 years, every State in the Nation has received disaster
payments--every State--none of it budgeted for, none of it paid for.
These disaster provisions are budgeted and paid for, and they further
reform disasters because in the past you could have losses on one part
of your operation, even though you had gains on the rest of it, and
still get a disaster payment. Under this proposal, under this new law,
if you have not had losses on your whole farm operation--disaster
losses on your whole farm operation--you are not going to get a
disaster payment.
I wish the Washington Post, when they write their editorials, would
bother to read the legislation they are critiquing because clearly they
do not know what they are writing about.
The final point I want to make: The Senator from New Hampshire, the
ranking member of the Budget Committee, who is my friend, somebody for
whom I have respect and affection, suggests over and over that somehow
this is not paid for, that it is going to add to the deficit. No. The
Congressional Budget Office, who are the official scorekeepers, and the
Joint Committee on Taxation have scored this bill. This is what they
say. We reduce the deficit over 5 years by $67 million; over 10 years,
by $110 million. This bill is fully pay-go compliant--fully. This bill
is paid for. It is paid for without a tax increase.
One final point: The Washington Post wrote another egregious story
the other day saying: Oh, there is this $16 billion additional cost
that might be out there. Yes, and elephants fly. Look, when are they
going to get objective in their reporting at the Washington Post? They
have suggested there might be this $16 billion cost. Really? There also
might be $16 billion of savings. A lot of things could happen. You
know--lightning strikes. A lot of things could happen.
Look at the last farm bill. We brought that in $17 billion in the
commodity provisions below what was forecast at the time. Did the
Washington Post ever write a story about that? Did they ever? No.
This bill is paid for. It is paid for without a tax increase. The
professional scoring of this legislation is that it is $10 billion over
baseline, completely paid for, without a tax increase.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to address the importance of the
nutrition assistance title of the farm bill. The bill goes a long way
toward ensuring that families in America will have food on their table,
even when times are tough. The bill also clarifies that their rights to
certain nutrition services are enforceable.
Sections 4116 through 4118 of the bill specifically reinforce
Congress's longstanding intention that the Food Stamp Act's provisions
and its regulations are fully enforceable and should be enforced. The
courts have historically and correctly understood Congress's intent
that low-income households have the right to enforce these provisions.
The language of the Food Stamp Act and its implementing regulations--
parts 271, 272, 273, and so on--have the kind of clear language
required for judicial enforcement. We made sure that they are
mandatory, not aspirational, and that they set out requirements for how
each individual is to be treated, not general program-wide goals. They
clearly define the benefited class as low-income people receiving or
seeking food assistance. Nothing in the act or regulations suggests
that substantial compliance overall excuses denying any individual the
benefit of these rules.
Along with oversight by the Department of Agriculture, lawsuits by
families participating in food stamps are one of the ways we can ensure
the Food Stamp Program fulfills its purpose. Indeed, it is partly
because applicants and recipients can and do bring lawsuits to enforce
program rules that the Department has not been required to withhold
funds from States to enforce service standards in the program.
This legislation also makes explicit that various civil rights laws
are binding in the Food Stamp Program. This is not a change--these laws
and their regulations have applied since they were written, and both
have been intended to be fully enforceable. This legislation just
reiterates a point that we hope and believe was already clear.
None of this would have been a question until two recent, unfortunate
court decisions. The first case, Reynolds, comes from the Second
Circuit. It applied a standard of analysis that departed from all prior
Federal court precedent and held that applicants and recipients could
hold a state accountable for the maladministration of the program by
local food stamp agencies only in the rarest of circumstances. The act
is and has been clear that States are responsible for full compliance
with all applicable regulations. States' responsibility is no less
because they have chosen to have counties or other local agencies
operate the program for them. The option of local administration exists
only as a courtesy or convenience to the States, not to reduce their
accountability. The State is just as responsible for what the local
agency does as if the State agency performed those acts itself. This
legislation emphasizes that point.
In the other case, called Almendarez, a Federal district court
refused to consider a suit brought by low-income people who need
assistance in a language other than English to apply for food stamps.
The Department's regulations clearly provide rights for families that
need language assistance. Now the act explicitly confirms that those
regulations are enforceable. Future cases can be decided on the merits,
as they should be.
This bipartisan legislation goes a long way toward providing food for
working families, and providing the security of knowing that help is
enforceable by law. I thank the chairman and
[[Page S4748]]
the committee for their tremendous work.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask
unanimous consent that the time be equally charged.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The 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. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President: How much time
remains on both sides?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If the Senator from Iowa will hold for a
second--the Republican leader has 14 minutes, the Senator from New
Hampshire has 2\1/2\ minutes, the majority side has 11 minutes.
Mr. HARKIN. Eleven minutes.
Mr. President, I understand that, obviously, in a quorum call the
time is taken evenly off of both sides. Since we have 11 minutes left,
I yield myself 4 minutes of that time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, would the Chair please remind this Senator
when his 4 minutes have elapsed?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will be so notified.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to respond to a couple things my
friend from New Hampshire said. He talked about the sugar provisions in
the bill and the support price of sugar, that it is over world prices.
I always point out to people that when you go in a restaurant, or
anywhere you go to eat, the sugar is free. You get these little packs
of sugar wherever you go. You go to Starbucks, you get free sugar. You
go to the airport, and you go down and get a cup of coffee, or
something like that, there is free sugar. It cannot get much cheaper
than that.
Does anyone believe if we were to drop these sugar support prices
down about 50 percent--which is what would happen with what the Senator
from New Hampshire wishes to have happen--do you believe candy prices
are going to go down? Do you believe food prices are going to go
down? Come on. It just means that the manufacturers, the processors
will just make more profits, that is all, and our nation's sugar
farmers won't. So you can't get much cheaper than free when it comes to
sugar when you go into your restaurants and coffee shops and places
such as that.
The next thing the Senator talked about is the $16 billion that the
Washington Post keeps talking about in new spending because of this new
program, this new option we have, this new reform program. That is a
doom's day scenario. Sure, if the bottom falls, if commodity prices
fall 40 percent, yes, we could see significant expenditures. But even
the Department of Agriculture in this administration has said they
don't expect prices to decline much if at all over the next 12 to 18
months. As pointed out earlier, because of the increased prices of
fertilizer, fuel, equipment--all of the input costs of agriculture--if
these prices drop to where they were 8 years ago, Lord help us. We
would have real economic hardship in rural America. So we have this new
program in the bill to help farmers deal with the new economic
realities in agriculture.
So, yes, you can take a doom's day scenario, but we don't plan our
lives around the fact that we have perhaps a 1 in 40 million chance of
getting hit by an asteroid. We don't plan our daily excursions by the
fact that we face on the order of a 1 in 50,000 chance that we could
get hit by a tornado or struck by lightning. Of course you can always
have doom's day scenarios. That is not how we crafted this new program
nor is it a reasonable way to judge it. We planned it in relation to
what is really happening in agriculture.
The last thing the Senator said was something about logrolling, where
some members will help other commodities or regions and then in return
members who have been helped will support policy for other commodities
in a different area. That is a total distortion of how this process
works. The fact is, in my area in Iowa, we don't grow cotton and
peanuts, let's face it. We just don't. I don't have much expertise in
that area, to be honest about it, so I rely upon Senator Chambliss or
Senator Cochran or those Members from other parts of the country who
know their agriculture. They know those commodities. So we rely upon
their expertise. You bet we do. I hope they rely a little bit on our
expertise when it comes to crops such as wheat and corn and soybeans
and other crops. The same goes for ranches. The distinguished Presiding
Officer comes from an area of the country where they have ranches. We
don't have ranches in Iowa, so I rely upon the Presiding Officer, who
is on the Agriculture Committee and who knows a lot about ranching and
what it means in his part of the country and what it means to have
livestock and livestock producers who run ranches. The Presiding
Officer also knows what it means for this nation to shift to new and
renewable forms of energy, including cellulosic energy, which he has
been a leader on. So we rely upon each other for this kind of
expertise. That is not logrolling; that is just recognizing that
different Senators who come from different parts of the country have
different expertise, and they can bring that expertise to the
Agriculture Committee. That is exactly how we develop these farm bills.
It is not logrolling, it is simply recognizing that we want this
legislation to work effectively everywhere across the nation,
regardless of the commodities grown or region involved, and to cover
the whole broad range of issues and challenges encompassed in this
bill.
That is why I think we have a very good bill here. As my friend
Senator Chambliss said, of course we don't agree with every single
thing in it, but that is the art of legislation, which is to compromise
and to work things out so that we can get good bipartisan support and
multiregional support. We did that in this farm bill. You can't get
much more bipartisan than 81 votes in the Senate or 318 votes in the
House. When you have that kind of overwhelming support, then you know
you probably have a good bill.
So, again, I urge Senators to vote to override the President's veto.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The 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, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Virginia.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ENERGY USE
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, Senator Bingaman and I will be introducing
in the Senate today a resolution to express the sense of the Senate
regarding the use of gasoline and other fuels by the departments and
agencies of the Federal Government. We simply refer to all of the
problems we see every morning, as we get up, in the papers and on the
television about how families are coping with this gas problem. We
simply say in a respectful way in the last paragraph--I will read it:
It is the sense of the Senate that the President should
require all Federal departments and agencies to take
initiatives to reduce daily consumption of gasoline and other
fuels by departments and agencies.
I thank my colleagues. The full text will be available to all Members
this afternoon. It is not as if we will be able to vote on this, but it
will be some message to take back home that you are in support of it.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I request to be added as an original
cosponsor.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I also request to be added as a cosponsor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Who yields time?
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be
yielded back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
[[Page S4749]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The yeas and nays are automatic under the
Constitution.
All time having been yielded back, the question is, Shall the bill
pass, the objections of the President of the United States to the
contrary notwithstanding?
The yeas and nays are required.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DeMINT (when his name was called). Present.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr.
Kennedy) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily
absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 82, nays 13, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 140 Leg.]
YEAS--82
Akaka
Alexander
Allard
Barrasso
Baucus
Bayh
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Boxer
Brown
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Chambliss
Clinton
Cochran
Coleman
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
Dodd
Dole
Dorgan
Durbin
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Graham
Grassley
Harkin
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Inouye
Isakson
Johnson
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Martinez
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Reid
Roberts
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Sessions
Shelby
Smith
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Stevens
Tester
Thune
Vitter
Warner
Webb
Wicker
Wyden
NAYS--13
Bennett
Collins
Domenici
Ensign
Gregg
Hagel
Kyl
Lugar
Murkowski
Reed
Sununu
Voinovich
Whitehouse
ANSWERED ``PRESENT''--1
DeMint
NOT VOTING--4
Coburn
Kennedy
McCain
Obama
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 82, the nays are
13, one Senator responding present. Two-thirds of the Senators voting,
a quorum being present, having voted in the affirmative, the bill on
reconsideration is passed, the objections of the President of the
United States to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Senator from Georgia is recognized.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, now that we have had this vote on the
veto of the conference report, none of us had wanted to have to
override a veto. As we move ahead now, because of the technicality and
the little glitch that we have had, we are not sure where we are going
to be when we come back, but there is going to be, possibly, the chance
that we are going to have to take up the full bill again as the House
did and passed it with a big vote. Over the next several days, I hope
maybe these waters will smooth out, and we can move ahead with the
concurrence of the White House so farmers and ranchers will have some
dependability on what type of programs we are going to have out there
for them.
Let me say again to my chairman, Senator Harkin, it has been a
pleasure to work with him and Senator Conrad, who has been such a great
ally in this process. It was great leadership to get us to where we are
now. Thank you on behalf of all farmers across America. Senator Baucus
and Senator Grassley have been so valuable in our process. We named all
the staff the other day, but we wouldn't be where we are without them.
Mr. President, I thank you and everybody have a safe holiday.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). The Senator from Iowa
is recognized.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I associate myself with the remarks made
by my good friend from Georgia, Senator Chambliss. This has been a long
effort. We worked very hard on this bill. I wish to reassure Senators,
this is a good bill. I know there are some editorials out there written
about it in the Washington Post and other publications. That is all
part of the process of debating and enacting legislation. But you have
to think, a lot of those editorials are written by those who likely
have never supported a farm bill anyway, so there you go. It is like
anything else, is this bill exactly what I would have wanted or Senator
Chambliss would have wanted or Senator Conrad would have wanted or
anybody else? No. But that is the art of legislation. It requires
cooperation, bipartisanship, compromise, and getting legislation
through that benefits all of our country.
As I have said many times, this farm bill benefits everyone from
farmers and ranchers, people in small towns such as my hometown of
Cumming, population of 162, to people who live in New York City.
The fact that we had 82 votes now on the override--81 before on the
conference report on the bill--and the overwhelming votes in the House,
I believe indicates people understand this is a broad bill that covers
every American--not just farmers, not just ranchers but everyone. It is
good for our country, good for our future. It is a bill that will make
sure we will continue to have an abundant, safe, affordable supply of
food for our people in this country, that we help low-income families
put food on their tables and that we help farmers and ranchers conserve
and protect our nation's priceless resources for present and future
generations.
This bill helps us move ahead to producing energy from cellulosic
materials--we have laid the foundation for having that in the future.
Just as we laid the foundation before for grain-based ethanol, now we
have laid the foundation for cellulose-based ethanol in the future.
It is a good bill, good for America. Again, I thank Senator
Chambliss, first, for when he was chairman actually starting this
process and then working together to get this bill through to its
conclusion; Senator Conrad, who has been such a valuable ally in this
effort, bringing the expertise that he has as the budget chairman and,
as I often said, making sure we keep on track. I have often said, in
writing legislation if you do something here that affects something
there and that affects something else, the Budget Committee and the
budget chairman have the knowledge and the expertise to know the budget
impact of such actions. It has been an invaluable resource to us, to
have that expertise of Senator Conrad on this committee and during this
whole debate and development of this farm bill.
I will also thank, again, Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley, our
chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, who worked so
closely with us to develop this legislation and make sure we had the
proper funding so we could get this bill through. They were invaluable
helping us to get this bill finally through.
I wish to make sure there is no doubt in anyone's mind now--14 of the
15 titles in the farm bill conference report are now law. We do not
require anybody else's signature; 14 of the 15 titles are now the law
of the land. As Senator Chambliss said, we do have this one little
glitch--evidently an innocent mistake, a clerical error that title III
was not included. We will deal with that at some other point. I don't
know exactly when, but that should not be much of a problem, since it
was simply a clerical error. We will take care of that.
I want people to know we have been in contact with both USDA and
USAID, the Agency for International Development. They told my staff
basically they could get by for a couple of weeks without our having to
do more today. We will have to move ahead as soon as we can, perhaps
that will not be until right after the recess, so our Pub. L. 480
programs and our development assistance programs, our market access
program, which is so important for our fruits and vegetables, specialty
crops and other programs in the trade title are taken care of.
Again, I thank everyone. As Senator Chambliss said, we have already
thanked our staff, but I don't know if we can thank them enough. They
have hung in every day on this.
I was going to say now they can take a vacation, but they have to
wait until this other title gets taken care of; but sometime soon our
staffs will be able to take a break.
Mr. President, I would like to expand upon my remarks on the
nutrition title
[[Page S4750]]
of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 so that I may provide
my colleagues with more information about the very important changes
made in the nutrition title, particularly to the Food Stamp Program.
The Food Stamp Program is the single most important antihunger program
in our Nation, helping millions of families, seniors, and people with
disabilities afford an adequate diet. It is our country's largest child
nutrition program and serves as a critical work support program,
enabling low-income working families to make ends meet and put food on
the table every month.
I know that many Senators have not had the opportunity to pore over
the details of the legislative language and conference report for the
nutrition title. So let me take this opportunity to provide some
background on what has been accomplished in the nutrition area of this
bill.
The conference report makes major investments and improvements in the
Food Stamp Program in this bill--starting with changing the name of the
program to the ``Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program'' or
``SNAP.'' The change reflects the reality that food assistance benefits
are no longer ``stamps'' but have been updated and modernized and are
now provided on special cards, like the debit or credit cards that most
Americans carry in their wallets. For the purposes of my remarks today,
I will use the term ``Food Stamp Program'' throughout my comments one
last time before this historic change is made.
One of the primary goals for the Food Stamp Program was to end the
decades of erosion in the purchasing power of food stamp benefits.
Because of harmful cuts to the program enacted in the midnineties, with
each passing year the purchasing power of most households' benefits has
actually decreased. The biggest annual cut, which has so far cumulated
in about $25 less in food assistance each month for the typical working
family, was from a freeze to the program's standard deduction. This cut
has affected about 10 million people a year, including many low-income
working families with children, senior citizens living on a fixed
income, and persons with disabilities.
The largest benefit improvement in this bill is an increase in the
standard deduction, which has been frozen for households of three or
fewer people for over 10 years, and end any future erosion in its value
by inflating the deduction each year. The inflated amounts will be
calculated based on the previous year's unrounded amount, so over time
we will not lose any more ground to inflation. This change will improve
benefits for about 13 million people and provide a typical working
family an additional $6 a month in food assistance in 2009, rising to
$17 a month by 2012.
Similarly, because it was not adjusted for inflation, the $10 monthly
minimum food assistance benefit purchases only about one-third as much
food today as it did when it was set more than 30 years ago. The
minimum benefit is set at 8 percent of the thrifty food plan, rounded
to the nearest whole dollar. This will mean it will be about $14 per
month in 2009--almost a 50-percent increase. The Thrifty Food Plan is
automatically indexed for inflation. As a result, the minimum benefit
will maintain its purchasing power. And, because the Thrifty Food Plan
is set at different levels for high-cost areas like Alaska and Hawaii,
a new and slightly higher minimum food assistance benefit will be
provided in those areas. For example, in fiscal year 2009 the Hawaii
minimum benefit level will be $22 a month. Additionally, about 15
States have special combined application projects where SSI recipients
receive standardized benefits. I expect USDA will reevaluate the cost-
neutrality of these projects so that these households also can receive
higher standardized benefit amounts to account for the higher monthly
minimum benefit and standard deduction levels.
The conference report ends erosion in other areas as well, including
the dependent care deduction and asset limit, about which I will speak
more briefly, but also the commodities for The Emergency Food
Assistance Program, TEFAP, and grants for community food projects and
fruits and vegetables in schools. For the first time since I have been
working on farm bills, we have clearly established the principle that
the value of benefits in our nutritional help for low-income families
and individuals should not erode over time, just as they do not in our
income tax code or the Social Security and Medicare Programs. This is a
remarkable achievement.
Another core principle that is addressed in this bill is that
building savings and accumulating assets is an important path to
financial independence. And here I want to especially thank the ranking
member, Senator Chambliss, for his leadership. Many agree that it is
counterproductive to discourage savings by forcing people to liquidate
their retirement savings or other financial assets when they lose their
jobs and need to turn to food assistance to feed their families.
Policymakers from across the political spectrum agree that asset
development is important to helping low-income Americans make a
permanent transition out of poverty as well as avoiding it in their
later years. After all, a family does not spend its way out of poverty.
Quite the opposite, most families build a path to financial security on
the foundation of assets, whether it be a home, a small business, or
retirement savings.
This bill ensures that all retirement accounts and education savings
accounts are excluded from a household's financial assets when
determining whether or not they are eligible for food assistance. And
for the first time in nearly two decades the $2,000 and $3,000 asset
limits will be adjusted for inflation each year.
It is also important to note what the Congress did not do in the
asset area. The administration proposed eliminating a State option
called expanded categorical eligibility which allows States to conform
the food stamp asset rules to those used in a TANF-funded benefit, and
proposed using those savings to finance the exclusion of retirement
accounts from eligibility determinations. Both the House and Senate
rejected that approach because of a belief that some assets, such as
retirement funds, should be excluded from the program on a national
basis.
In addition, by leaving the existing State option on categorical
eligibility in place, States have the full flexibility to set their own
asset policy. I strongly encourage USDA to work with States to expand
the use of this State option beyond the 15 States that thus far have
expanded categorical eligibility. States with nearly 40 percent of the
food stamp caseload do not currently use the national asset policy. I
hope that in the coming months and years we will see more and more
States take the option.
Another major improvement in this bill supports working families by
allowing them to deduct the full amount of their childcare expenses
from their income for purposes of food assistance eligibility and
benefit determinations. The current cap on the dependent care deduction
has not been raised in 15 years, but child care costs have continued to
grow. Even when a low-income working family gets help paying for child
care, the family's share, or copayment, can be substantial. Now,
because of changes in this bill, the amount of food assistance that a
family receives will reflect the actual child care costs families pay
to be able to hold down their jobs. By lifting the cap, families
eligible for the deduction will be able to deduct the full value of
their childcare costs, rather than just a portion of the costs. The
change would provide an average of almost $500 a year--more than $40 a
month--to approximately 100,000 households that pay high childcare
costs.
This change was made cognizant of current USDA policy on the
childcare deduction, which takes a broad view of what constitutes a
dependent care cost, defers to parents about what is appropriate
childcare, and lets States determine how to set verification policy.
This proposal was part of USDA's original farm bill proposal and they
have given us every reason to believe they will continue these policies
and do nothing that would limit what is deductible or the amount
families may deduct.
For households that apply or recertify their eligibility after
October 1, 2008, the dependent care cap will no longer be in effect. We
expect that States will notify households already participating in the
program with dependent care expenses at or above the
[[Page S4751]]
current cap about the policy change. These households should be given
the opportunity to receive the higher dependent care deduction that
corresponds to their full costs as soon as the provision takes effect.
A benefit increase for these households however, is their option. In no
case should a household have its benefits terminated or reduced for not
responding to paperwork requesting verification for the amount of
childcare costs they have above the current cap. In two areas, this
bill builds upon the very successful State options provided in the 2002
farm bill. These simplifications have made the program less burdensome
on States agencies and families alike, have helped to keep low-income
households connected to the Food Stamp Program, and have been a major
factor in the sustained drop in State food assistance error rates.
The 2002 farm bill allowed States to extend ``simplified'' reporting
rules to most households. Some 48 States and the District of Columbia
have adopted this popular State option, which dramatically simplifies
the rules for how many food stamp participants inform the State about
changes in their income and other circumstances.
Unfortunately, due to an oversight in the 2002 bill, States are not
allowed to apply simplified reporting to several categories of
households, such as households with only elderly or disabled members.
USDA wisely, through guidance and in its proposed regulation, allowed
States to extend the option to some households that might be excluded,
such as homeless households and migrant and seasonal farmworkers. This
bill specifically allows these households to be included in simplified
reporting and extends the State option to households with only elderly
and disabled members, so long as States extend the simplified option
for 1 year rather than 6 months for such households to reflect the fact
that many of them live on fixed incomes and have stable living
situations and thus do not have many changes to report. In fact
imposing 6 month reports on these households would make them worse off
by putting their food assistance at risk more often than is now the
case.
This change will allow States to simplify their operations and reduce
confusion, by having just one reporting system with common forms, staff
training, and other rules. I urge USDA to implement this provision and
the underlying simplified reporting option in a way that allows it to
achieve its full intent of minimizing the number of changes that
households need to report and that States need to respond to, whether
those changes are for food stamps or for another program that the State
administers along with the Food Stamp Program. Simplified reporting
cannot be simple if USDA allows exceptions to our basic principle that
changes should only be made to the case if a household reports that
their income exceeds the gross income limit.
Another popular and successful provision from the 2002 farm bill gave
States the option to provide 5 months of transitional food assistance
to families that leave welfare. We did this not only because we wanted
to reduce the paperwork burden but also to keep eligible families
connected to food assistance when they left welfare for work. This is
important because we know that, for families who are leaving welfare
for employment, the first couple of months are particularly vulnerable.
Having work supports such as food assistance help them to weather this
period and actually decreases the likelihood that they will return to
cash assistance.
The 2002 farm bill made this State option available to families that
leave Federal TANF-funded cash assistance programs. Since then, some
States have established separate State-funded cash assistance programs
for certain groups of poor families with children. These State programs
give greater flexibility to States to develop services and supports
that can serve these families appropriately.
This bill extends to States the option to provide transitional food
assistance to individuals participating in these State-funded public
assistance programs. Several States have specifically indicated that
this change will be beneficial to them and the families with children
that they serve.
For all of these benefit improvements, I expect USDA to implement the
provisions in a way that is sensitive to the needs of the State
agencies that administer the program. It is with some disappointment
and disbelief that I note that the administration still has not yet
issued final regulations for the 2002 farm bill's food stamp
provisions. In implementing this bill I urge USDA to provide
sufficient, flexible guidance to States in a timely manner. One of the
helpful implementing policies USDA allowed in 2002 was to extend the
120-day quality control hold harmless protections to provisions that
are State options, such as simplified reporting and transitional food
stamps. I expect USDA to allow that policy for this farm bill as well.
In addition to major improvements in the benefit levels and rules,
the nutrition title contains numerous program oversight and integrity
provisions, as well as provisions that address basic program
operations.
As I mentioned at the outset of my remarks, this bill finalizes the
replacement of paper coupons in favor of the electronic benefits on
plastic cards that are now the way people access their food assistance
across the country. The bill prohibits States from issuing any new
coupons and provides that existing coupons shall be redeemable for only
1 year from the date this bill is enacted. This is a minor change in
the operation of the program, since no State currently issues coupons
and fewer are redeemed each month. Nonetheless, the change required
numerous technical and conforming revisions in the statute to purge the
act of ``coupons'' and other trappings of the old system. No policy
changes are intended in making these revisions other than to reflect
the existing reality. For example, in replacing the word ``coupons''
with ``benefits'' Congress did not intend to change policy beyond
simply recognizing that coupons do not exist anymore. The term
``benefits'' refers to the food voucher-like benefits that households
receive on electronic benefit transfer cards, EBT, but does not include
auxiliary activities under the act, such as nutrition education or food
stamp employment and training services.
Despite the overwhelming success of electronic benefits in
modernizing benefit delivery, reducing retailer fraud, and removing a
large source of stigma for recipients, there is one area where there
remain concerns about EBT benefits, and this bill has tried to address
the concern. Under the old food stamp coupon system, some households,
especially seniors who qualify for small benefits, could store up those
smaller amounts and use several months' worth in one shopping trip or
for a special occasion, such as a holiday gathering. With food stamp
coupons there was no deadline for how long they were good for.
Under EBT systems, however, some States have moved households'
benefits ``offline'' after as few as 3 months if there is no activity
in the account. This can be a problem for households that receive small
benefits and want to store them up for a special supermarket trip.
So this bill strikes a balance. It allows States to move a
household's benefits offline if the household has not accessed the EBT
account for 6 months. But the State will be required to notify the
household of this step and to reinstate its benefits within 48 hours if
the household makes a request.
I expect States to make the process for recovering benefits after
they have been moved offline easy for households. Any inquiry about
food assistance, or general request for assistance from a household
that has had benefits moved offline, should be considered a request for
reinstatement of lost benefits. In other words, households should not
have to contact a particular phone number or ask for some complicated
reinstatement option in order to get benefits restored to their
accounts. Rather, eligibility workers and local office or call center
employees should assist households and should help them to initiate the
process of reinstating their benefits.
I recognize that some States may need to renegotiate the terms of
their EBT contracts, and I urge USDA to work with States to implement
the provision as quickly as possible given the time constraints set by
the effective date constraints.
This bill also responds to another benefit issuance matter that has
come
[[Page S4752]]
up recently in Michigan and in other places over the years. States
currently issue food stamps in one monthly installment for each
household. They may, and usually do, ``stagger'' food stamps by issuing
the month's food stamps to different households on different days of
the month, for example, based on the last digit of the household head's
Social Security number. This practice spreads out the state's workload
and helps supermarkets smooth out the demand for food.
Some States--most recently Michigan--have faced pressure from
retailers and others to divide each individual households' monthly
allotment into two or more issuances over the month. I do not support
such a change and was surprised to learn that the law permitted it.
Dividing households' monthly food stamp allotments could prevent some
households from making large buying trips or from purchasing large,
economy-size containers of staple foods. It also would be burdensome on
households with small benefit amounts--such as seniors--because they
would have to use their food assistance EBT card at multiple shopping
trips during the month instead of only one. In fact, the Michigan
Department of Human Services polled current food assistance recipients
about such a potential change and learned that recipients strongly
opposed splitting food assistance benefits into a twice-monthly
allotment.
The bill includes a provision that would prevent States from dividing
monthly allotments. No other policy changes are envisioned. The bill
does not intend to change the rules with respect to the issuance of
expedited benefits, the proration of benefits for partial months, the
issuance of supplemental benefits in the event a benefit correction is
needed, the way that people who reside, or formerly resided, in drug or
alcohol addiction treatment facilities receive food assistance, or any
other area.
The nutrition title also clarifies a provision that has inadvertently
denied food assistance benefits to innocent people. Individuals who are
being actively pursued by law enforcement for outstanding felony
charges or for violations of probation or parole are not eligible for
food assistance benefits. This rule appropriately ensures that
fugitives do not receive public support.
However, in practice, this rule occasionally denies food assistance
to the wrong people--innocent people whose identities may have been
stolen by criminals or those whose offenses were so minor or so long
ago that law enforcement has no interest in pursuing them. If the
issuing authority does not care to apprehend the applicant when
notified of his or her whereabouts, there is no public purpose served
by denying food assistance benefits.
Unfortunately, inadequate guidance to States has resulted in exactly
that. This provision would correct this by requiring USDA to clarify
the terms used and make sure that States are not incorrectly
disqualifying needy people who are not being actively pursued by law
enforcement authorities.
One important area of the bill has not gotten a lot attention. It has
to do with our own, as well as USDA's oversight of State administration
of the program. Several provisions in the nutrition title are included
to improve oversight of States with respect to computer systems,
eligibility processes, and access to benefits.
For example, the bill requires States to adequately test and pilot
new computer systems. I do not wish to see another instance of a State
implementing a multimillion dollar computer system that does not work,
and which USDA knew would not work. Time and time again, I have read
about computer systems that do not work and either cause families to
wait 3 months for food stamps or that issue benefits inaccurately. That
is unacceptable management of the program. USDA must demand adequate
testing and hold States, not clients, accountable for any mistakes in
benefits when there is a major systems failure.
The bill also includes a provision that was proposed by USDA to
increase the penalties on States if, despite these measures, a ``major
systems failure'' nonetheless occurs. If the Secretary determines that
overissuances have occurred because of a ``major systems failure,'' the
States, rather than households, as is usually the case, are to be
liable to repay the Federal Government for the cost of the
overissuance. This is entirely appropriate because the mistake is
clearly not the household's fault, and their ability to purchase food
should not be compromised because of the State's egregious mistakes.
When major State problems occur, the State's energy and resources
should be focused on fixing the problem, not on collecting from low-
income households that had no role in the mistake.
New automated systems are not the only program area that requires
more oversight, monitoring, and enforcement of standards. States are
now using online applications, conducting business with clients over
the phone, and in some cases closing local offices and reducing staff
as a result of these changes. New technologies present enormous
opportunities to improve customer service, but they also carry risks if
the technology does not work or the State agency lacks sufficient
oversight. The bill is, in part, responding to a recent GAO report that
found that USDA has not collected sufficient information on the effects
of alternative methods of benefit delivery on program access, payment
accuracy, and administrative costs. The bill requires USDA to set
standards for identifying when States are making major changes in their
operations and for States to notify USDA and report on the effect these
changes have on program integrity and households' access to benefits.
Though the provision of which I am speaking, section 4116 does not
specifically pertain to the privatization of the Food Stamp Program, it
does have particular relevance given recent efforts by two States,
Texas and Indiana, to privatize major components of their food
assistance delivery mechanism. Prior to the approval by the Food and
Nutrition Service of both the Texas contract and the Indiana contract,
I communicated extensively with the Food and Nutrition Service by
letter as to the kinds and manner of data collection that I deemed
critical in each instance. I continue to be extremely concerned that
USDA is not properly monitoring those projects, as well as other State
efforts to transform the way that services are delivered with respect
to how these new systems are affecting the most vulnerable members of
our society. Because that correspondence was extensive and because it
is in the records of USDA, I will not submit it here for the record. I
would note however, that in implementing section 4116 of the conference
report, I expect USDA to closely review my prior correspondence
regarding the Texas and Indiana contracts regarding what kinds of
information should be collected. In particular, I expect USDA to review
my letter to Secretary Johanns sent on January 19, 2006. That letter in
particular clearly laid out expectations as to proper evaluation
criteria, especially as they pertained to program access for certain
vulnerable populations, such as individuals with disabilities and those
with limited-English proficiency.
I would also like to note that USDA has thus far refused, both in the
case of Texas and the case of Indiana, to gather appropriate quality
control data in the specific geographic areas that were initially
rolled out for testing. In those cases, I asked USDA to gather quality
control data that was specific to the geographical area that was being
initially rolled out so that a comparison could be made to the rest of
the State that was still operating under normal parameters, and I asked
USDA to gather data that would allow for a timely evaluation of the
pilot area. USDA responded that this was not possible because quality
control data is not gathered for substate geographical areas and
quality control data is not available for evaluation until many months
after it is first gathered.
This provision allows USDA to rectify this situation and, in addition
to other reporting measures, I fully expect USDA, in implementing this
provision, to ensure that quality control data is gathered when there
are major changes in program design that allows for comparison of
substate areas that are being tested and which allows for the timely
use of the State-reported data in evaluation prior to moving ahead with
later phases of a project.
Another provision of the bill creates an explicit State option for
accepting food assistance applications over the
[[Page S4753]]
telephone. As I previously mentioned, innovative States have
experimented with online applications and telephone interviews as a way
of streamlining the process for people who have difficulty coming to
welfare offices, such as working families with busy schedules and
senior citizens.
The nutrition title would allow households to apply for food
assistance over the telephone and have their benefits date back to the
date of the telephone application. This is important to ensure that
households that apply over the telephone do not have a delay in their
benefits and receive smaller benefits for the first month. We have
provided that a telephone signature should be accepted as adequate for
all purposes. No subsequent mail-in application should be required in
order for the application to be considered filed by the State agency.
Throughout the history of the Food Stamp Program, the courts have
played a positive, constructive role in ensuring that congressional
intent is carried out. The program has not been overrun with litigation
because both Congress, in writing statutes, and USDA, in writing
regulations, have taken great pains to be clear and specific. On those
rare occasions when courts have misunderstood our intent on an
important matter, Congress has amended that statute accordingly.
Because USDA keeps the Agriculture Committees closely apprised of its
regulatory actions, Congress also has been comfortable with--indeed
supportive of--litigation to enforce the Department's regulations. On
numerous occasions when we leave a matter open in the statute, it is
because USDA has told us exactly how it plans to address the matter in
regulations. Congress has always operated on the assumption, and with
the intent, that the program's regulations would be fully enforceable
and fully complied with to the same extent as the statute.
I was disturbed to learn of two recent cases in which courts
disregarded the longstanding history of judicial enforcement of the act
and regulations. A district court in Ohio refused to entertain a suit
brought to enforce the Department's regulations for serving people
whose primary language is not English, and an appellate court in New
York held that States are less responsible for compliance with the act
and regulations when the program is administered by local governments
than when the State administers the program itself.
Accordingly, this legislation clarifies that States must comply with
the Department's rules on service to non-English-speaking households as
well as with the statute. The regulations, no less than the statute,
create rights for households to ensure that they can receive benefits.
Responding to the New York case, the legislation clarifies that
States' responsibility is no less in locally administered systems.
Congress has granted States the option for local administration as a
convenience; nothing in the law reduces States' responsibility if they
take this option. If the State could not be held fully accountable for
strict compliance with the act and regulations in these cases, local
administration would not be permitted. These amendments correct that
problem.
I have been a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee or the House
Agriculture Committee for over 30 years. I have always operated on the
assumption that the act and regulations create enforceable rights for
actual and prospective participants and that litigation may properly
arise under provisions of either. When I have heard of examples where
applicants or clients were not provided with the service that the act
and rules provide, such as timely and fair service, assistance for
those who need it by the State agency or 10 days to turn in requested
paperwork, I have supported the right of an individual to file a claim
against the State to enforce the rules established by Congress and the
regulations stemming from the statute.
With very few exceptions, the old Food Stamp Act and the new Food and
Nutrition Act are based on the principle of individual rights. Much of
that stems from a history in the 1960s and 1970s of clients not being
able to gain access to the program. To be sure, section 2 has little in
it to enforce: subsections (a) through (g) of section 7 do not affect
individual households, and sections 9, 10, 12, and 15 focus on
retailers and wholesalers. Within section 11, paragraphs (e)(19),
(e)(20), (e)(22), and (e)(23), as well as subsections (f) through (h),
(k), (l), (n) through (r), and (t), regulate state agencies rather than
households. The same is true in section 16 of the beginning of
subsection (a) as well as of subsections (c), (d), and (f) through (k).
Sections 14(a), 18(e) and (f), 19, 23, 25, and 27 similarly do not
convey rights to households. A few other provisions by their terms no
longer apply to anyone. But by and large, the Agriculture Committees,
and Congress as a whole, have consistently intended that the Food Stamp
Program be administered in strict conformity with the Food Stamp Act
and with regulations the Secretary has duly promulgated under this act
and that prospective and actual participants be entitled to enforce
these provisions legally.
The legislation also clarifies the act's privacy protections to
ensure that those receiving confidential information for legitimate
reasons are not free to make other uses of that information or to
retransmit it to third parties. Any decisions about releasing or using
information should be made in advance by the Department or State food
stamp agencies. The focus was on retransmission of information. Other
than the provision explicitly allowing these records to be accessed in
households' litigation, the bill does not expand initial access to
confidential information. Confidential records would continue to be
unavailable to the general public and others not having a legitimate
reason relating to program administration.
In the program integrity area the bill responds to USDA's request for
more flexibility in how they penalize retailers who have committed
fraud against the program. Electronic benefits have greatly reduced the
occurrence of clients converting their food assistance benefits into
cash, but there sometimes remain problems with stores finding ways to
enrich themselves at the expense of the Federal Government and low-
income households. Under this bill USDA will have more flexibility in
the types of penalties it can impose on such stores. USDA will be able
to disqualify an offending retailer, subject the retailer to financial
penalties, or both.
Elsewhere in the bill, the Secretary is provided expanded authority
to penalize individuals and companies that defraud USDA programs. While
that provision does not apply to any of the individuals and families
who receive food assistance it could be used with respect to retailers
and other program operators. Given our history of collaboration with
the Department on crafting this retailer fraud provisions as well as
fraud detection and enforcement systems in the other nutrition
programs, it is not my expectation that the Secretary would ever use
that authority without extensive consultation with the Agriculture
Committees.
The bill also adds two new specific disqualifications for recipients
who have intentionally used their food assistance benefits
inappropriately. I do not think these kinds of behaviors are common
among food assistance recipients, but they are nonetheless
inappropriate, and people who engage in them should be penalized. The
first came up because of a story in my State. Apparently someone used
their food assistance benefits to buy water in returnable containers.
The individual's real goal, however, was to discard the water and
return the container for the cash deposit. This kind of activity is
obviously not consistent with the purpose of the program and States
will now have specific authority to deal with it when it occurs.
The second would address instances where food assistance recipients
intentionally resell food that they have purchased with food assistance
benefits. This is a little bit of a grey area, and I want to be clear
about what we do and do not intend with this provision. It is not
consistent with the goals of the program for individuals to resell
large quantities of food for a profit that they have bought with food
stamp benefits. However, I recognize that food stamp households may
occasionally buy a cake mix which is used to make cupcakes for their
child's elementary school bake sale or they may shop for one another
and reimburse each other for food. Two families who share an
[[Page S4754]]
apartment may sometimes share or swap food, even though they generally
purchase and prepare their meals separately. These are not fundamental
affronts to the integrity of the program. In fact, these are facts of
life for honest low- and moderate-income families. USDA and States
should only treat the egregious cases--where recipients intentionally
sell food that was clearly purchased with food assistance benefits for
a cash profit--as fraud. Innocent, well-intentioned low-income
individuals should not be disqualified under this new provision.
The bill also includes $20 million in the nutrition title for pilot
projects to test innovative ways of using the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program to improve the diets and overall health of
recipients and to especially reduce the problems of obesity and the
related bad health outcomes. Particularly, this funding is provided for
USDA to carry out a pilot program that would test whether certain
incentives can be effective in helping food stamp households to
purchase healthier foods. The funding is intended to be used for a
pilot program using the existing EBT infrastructure. For example, a
participating household that purchases fruits and vegetables with their
food stamp benefits would receive a discount on the portion of their
purchase that is deemed healthful. Or alternatively, the household
would have extra benefits added onto its EBT card for the component of
their grocery store purchases that are healthful.
This provision is an investment in a very important area. But I must
be clear that it is very important for these pilot projects to be
rigorously evaluated and that the evaluations be independent, so the
Agriculture Committee can have reliable information on what really
works and does not work to change people's food purchasing behavior,
diets, and health status. To provide USDA with maximum flexibility in
implementing this provision, the statute does not go into great deal
about the structure of the pilot program. However, I have every
expectation that USDA will consult closely with the Agriculture
Committee as it works to implement this provision.
The bill also requires USDA to study the cost and feasibility of
reinstating the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico into the national Food
Stamp Program. Since 1982 Puerto Rico has received a fixed block grant
amount for food assistance, rather than be a part of the U.S. program
like the 50 States, District of Columbia, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.
This block grant does not take into account changes in economic or
demographic conditions, such as unemployment or the number of people
who are in need of food assistance. Puerto Rico operates their
Nutrition Assistance Program with rules very similar to the Food Stamp
Program, except that it has been forced to impose much lower
eligibility criteria as a result of capped funding. For example, a
Puerto Rican household has a maximum net income limit of only 23
percent to 34 percent of the poverty level, instead of the 100 percent
cut off used in the Food Stamp Program. It is important that Congress
gain a better understanding of whether we are meeting the food needs of
U.S. citizens living in Puerto Rico and whether inclusion in the Food
Stamp Program would be appropriate in the Commonwealth. With this study
I hope to get a better understanding of what the local conditions are
in Puerto Rico and how to address the issues in the next farm bill.
Another provision of the bill seeks to ensure that all children who
live in households receiving food stamps are getting the free school
meals to which they are entitled. Forty percent of all food assistance
recipients are school-age children and about 45 percent of food
assistance benefits go to families with school-age children. Food
assistance benefits are a critical factor in reducing food insecurity
amongst families with children. All children in families receiving food
assistance get another important benefit--automatic enrollment for free
school meals provided through the National School Lunch and School
Breakfast Programs. Such children have been eligible for free school
meals for some time, but the requirement that they be automatically
enrolled without completing a duplicative paper application was enacted
in 2004 and will be effective nationwide for the first time in the 2008
to 2009 school year.
The goal of the direct certification requirement is to move to a
system that seamlessly enrolls 100 percent of school-age children in
households receiving food assistance benefits for free school meals
without imposing any additional paperwork on already stressed families.
Unfortunately, it appears that some States are not implementing this
provision effectively. As a result, families and schools must fill out
and process needless paperwork that was already processed by the food
stamp agency. I strongly encourage USDA to work with States to ensure
better implementation of direct certification. Government need not and
should not be unnecessarily redundant and wasteful. This legislation
requires USDA to report to Congress annually on each State's progress
toward that goal and to identify best practices. The report can thus be
used to help States assess their own progress and expand the reach of
direct certification.
The farm bill nutrition title makes a significant new investment in
food purchases for emergency food organizations, increasing the Federal
mandatory funding that is available from $140 million per year to $250
million, adjusted for annual food inflation. Because the amount has
been flat since 2002 it has lost purchasing power, while food prices
have climbed by more than 15 percent. TEFAP also will receive $50
million in additional funding for the remainder of fiscal year 2008 to
deal with the short-term immediate needs of food banks in light of the
recent economic downturn and high food price inflation.
I would also like to highlight some of the changes we made to the
Food Distribution Program on Indian reservations. As my colleagues may
know, under the Food Stamp Act, tribal governments have the authority
to run a commodity program for their tribal members who would prefer
commodities to food stamps. The program helps ensure that low-income
Native Americans who live in very remote areas and for whom food stamps
are not an option have access to nutritious foods. Currently, there are
approximately 243 tribes receiving benefits under the FDPIR through 98
Indian tribal organizations and five State agencies.
The bill makes a number of changes to the program. First, the statute
is clarified to ensure that individuals disqualified from the Food
Stamp Program are also disqualified from FDPIR. Second, the bill
provides more authority to ensure that traditional and local foods are
included in the food package based on input from program participants.
Finally, and perhaps most important, Congress is requiring USDA to
submit a report on the FDPIR food package and its ability to meet the
food and health needs of low-income Native Americans. I am deeply
concerned that FDPIR may be failing as a substitute for the Food Stamp
Program. Unlike food stamps, it does not differentiate between the food
needs of the poorest versus those with more income. Moreover, I am
concerned that the quality of the food provided in the food package is
not as healthy and nutritious as it ought to be, nor does it respond to
the diet and health challenges of Native Americans. The Secretary has
open ended authority to improve or expand FDPIR, which is an
entitlement to Native Americans in lieu of the Food Stamp Program. I
look forward to hearing from USDA about if or how FDPIR needs to be
modified to respond to the food security needs of its participants.
The nutrition title also make a very significant investment in the
health of our Nation's children by expanding the Fresh Fruit and
Vegetable Program, which will receive $150 million annually within 5
years and thereafter be indexed to inflation. Several important policy
changes are also made to the program. First, because eating habits are
established early in life, we limit the program to just elementary
schools, with an appropriate transition period for currently
participating secondary schools. The bill also includes significantly
strengthened targeting of program funds to low-income children by
specifying that priority be given to applicant schools that have the
highest proportion of children who are eligible for free or reduced-
price meals. I expect USDA and states to take this income targeting
very seriously. The
[[Page S4755]]
statute is very clear. It does not suggest that the prioritization of
low-income schools is optional but clearly indicates that first
priority be given to the schools with the greatest proportion of low-
income children. The statute also removes any reference to dried fruits
that previously existed. The program is intended to provide fresh
fruits and vegetables only.
As my colleagues may gather from my remarks, I am extremely proud of
what we have accomplished in the nutrition title of this farm bill. We
have made the title a top priority within the bill and taken pains to
ensure that we strengthen our Federal nutrition programs for the tens
of millions of children, seniors and families they serve. Of course, we
still have a long way to go before we end hunger in this country. But
with this legislation we will be moving in a direction of reducing
hunger, strengthening our people and building healthier, stronger
communities.
Mr. President, in addition to the more than 1,000 farm, conservation,
nutrition, consumer and religious organizations who urged us to
override this veto, more than 2,700 Americans signed an online
petition, which said the following:
We urge Congress to override President Bush's veto of the
2008 farm bill . . . It protects the safety net for all of
America's food producers, increases funding to feed our
nation's poor, enhances support for important conservation
initiatives, and helps make America more energy independent .
. . Please vote to override President Bush's veto and enact
the 2008 Farm Bill into law.
I will not enter all the names into the Record because there are e-
mail addresses listed here, and I don't want to make all those public.
I ask consent to have the petition printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
We urge Congress to override President Bush's expected veto
of the 2008 Farm Bill which takes our country in a bold new
direction. It protects the safety net for all of America's
food producers, increases funding to feed our nation's poor,
enhances support for important conservation initiatives, and
helps make America more energy independent.
The House and the Senate passed the Farm Bill on May 14-15
with enough bipartisan support to override a possible veto by
President Bush.
We urge members of Congress to continue to vote for the
interests of Americans instead of caving to President Bush
who is out of touch with the everyday needs of middle
America.
Please vote to override President Bush's veto and enact the
2008 Farm Bill into law.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, we should take a moment to appreciate the
historic nature of this vote. This is the first time ever a
Presidential veto of a farm bill has been overridden. Of course, we all
know this is far more than a farm bill. In fact, that is a misnomer.
This is a food bill, a conservation bill, an energy bill--all those
things combined in a way that I think should make us all proud. It got
82 votes for a reason. It is a good product. It got 316 votes on a
Presidential override because it is a good product.
I thank especially the leadership of the Agriculture Committee. Our
chairman, Senator Harkin, who is indefatigable, to have a vision to
turn farm policy in a new direction, to be more conservation oriented--
history will treat him very kindly. Senator Chambliss--we call him, in
our office ``Cool Hand Luke'' because you couldn't ask for a better
partner throughout an effort than Senator Chambliss has been to all of
us. He has been steadfast. He has been calm, cool, and collected in a
lot of situations that demanded real restraint in order to keep things
together. I also thank him for the friendship we have formed throughout
this effort.
To the staffs--I wish to especially thank my staff: Jim Miller, my
lead negotiator who has given body and soul to this effort. I calculate
he spent more than 3,000 hours over the last 2 years on this effort;
Tom Mahr, my legislative director, who has a lot of brainpower that he
brought to this effort, as he does to so many jobs in my office. I
deeply appreciate all the assistance Tom has given me and the other
members, the other negotiators; Scott Stofferahn, my other negotiator,
who helped write the disaster provisions that have proven to be so well
done. John Fuher is a member of my staff who has taken on a lot of
responsibility at a young age. He has stepped up onto the stage. I
appreciate it. Miles Patrie and Joe McGarvey handled key sections of
the legislation; on Senator Harkin's staff, Mark Halverson, the staff
director. I joked the other day he started to go gray in this process.
You know, it may go further than gray with the little glitch that
happened over on the House side; and Susan Keith, who is so determined
to write good agriculture policy, she can be proud of what she has
helped accomplish in this bill; Martha Scott Poindexter is a consummate
professional, somebody for whom we developed high regard. It has been a
delight to work with her; Martha Scott, we appreciate the good humor
you have brought to this effort, as well as Vernie Hubert, a consummate
pro. These are talented people, good people. They deserve our thanks.
I also wish to thank, if I can, the occupant of the chair, Senator
Nelson of Nebraska. He is a critically important member of the
Agriculture Committee who has provided that kind of mature leadership
that is so often necessary in writing legislation of this importance. I
thank the occupant of the chair for all he did to make this a reality
as well.
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