[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 166 (Friday, December 21, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8346-S8347]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE ``DAIRY CLIFF''

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have spent time on the Senate floor this 
week talking about the emergency supplemental appropriations bill to 
address Hurricane Sandy. But today I remind the Congress of another 
impending disaster. Unlike Sandy, but exactly like the fiscal cliff 
crisis, this is a man-made disaster that can and must be averted by 
December 31. Unfortunately, this calamity has been artificially created 
and forced upon us by forces of stalemate and obstruction in the House 
of Representatives. This disaster involves the Farm Bill and what 
happens on the first of January if the House continues to hold the 
Senate-passed Farm Bill hostage.
  The American people have heard again and again about the fiscal 
cliff. Today, once again, I am talking about the ``dairy cliff'' that 
awaits us if the House continues to block action on the Farm Bill. A 
full six months have passed since the Senate approved a strong Farm 
Bill with bipartisan support. We came together in the Senate and passed 
a 5-year Farm Bill that contains some of the most significant reforms 
in agricultural policy in a generation, while providing $23 billion in 
real deficit reduction.
  After we passed the Senate Farm Bill, the House Agriculture Committee 
held a markup of their bill in July and passed a bipartisan bill out of 
Committee. Regrettably, that is where their work ended. The leadership 
in the House has refused to even bring their bill to the floor for 
debate, something that has not happened in the past 50 years.
  Inaction by the House caused the Farm Bill to expire on September 30, 
terminating authorizations for a long list of important programs that 
benefit farmers, rural communities, consumers, and the 16 million 
Americans whose jobs depend on agriculture. Chairwoman Stabenow was on 
the floor earlier this week to point out the fact that is has been 80 
days since the Farm Bill expired. That is 80 days that our farm 
families and small businesses have been waiting and holding their 
breath. This is artificially generating untold uncertainty that is 
costing farmers, consumers and our entire economy in very real and 
highly unpredictable ways. This not only is unprecedented, it is 
legislative malpractice. It threatens great harm to the Nation and the 
American people. And it is wrong. Yet the Nation, including Vermont 
dairy farmers, incredibly enough are now on the verge of plunging over 
the dairy cliff.
  By failing to even consider a Farm Bill, the House leadership has 
driven us straight to the edge of this dairy cliff and now is refusing 
to turn the wheel or put a foot on the brake. This is a pointless and 
dangerous game of chicken, dragging all Americans along for the ride.
  On January 1--a mere 11 days from now--the final shoe will drop when 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture will be required to implement what 
is known as ``permanent law'' for our Nation's dairy industry. The 
Secretary of Agriculture and his staff have been--quite literally--
dusting off old paper files and mimeographed notes from the 1940s and 
50s to review the Agricultural Act of 1949. Without a new Farm Bill, on 
January 1 the Nation will be forced to revert to the parity pricing 
that was part of that long-ago law that was passed a few short years 
after the end of World War II.
  The House's inaction on its own version of the Farm Bill, and its 
obstruction of the Senate bill--a Senate bill that saves taxpayers $23 
billion--will force the Secretary of Agriculture to implement a law 
from the middle of the last century. This archaic law will force the 
Federal Government to spend billions of dollars to buy and store dairy 
products to help raise the price of fluid milk for dairy farmers. The 
Secretary will have to keep spending until he is able to raise the 
price of fluid milk by 60 or 70 percent. This is pointless and wasteful 
Federal spending. And it is even worse than that. Taking those products 
off the market will drive up consumer prices--prices that struggling 
families must pay, from coast to coast, just to put food on the table--
as early as next month. And that's not the end of this needless waste. 
The Department of Agriculture then will have to pay still more 
taxpayers' dollars to store all of these dairy products.
  So rather than pass the Senate Farm Bill that saves $23 billion, the 
House is choosing to put the Secretary of Agriculture on a path to 
having to spend billions of dollars on dairy products, paying to store 
those products, and driving the price of milk through the ceiling for 
consumers. This is not even to mention the effects this could have on 
world prices and the harm it will cause for the vulnerable millions 
worldwide who rely on dairy products for their basic nutrition. That, 
in summary, is what the dairy cliff is all about.
  Every 5 years for the last 60 years, Congress has passed a Farm Bill. 
Never before has the Farm Bill expired like this. And now on January 1 
we will implement market-distorting dairy policy so old that 49 current 
members of the Senate--including the Chairwoman of the Senate 
Agriculture Committee--were not even born when it was signed into law 
by then-President Harry Truman.
  Market chaos will erupt if we do not divert from this disastrous, 
reckless, needless, man-made path. Chaos, from the fact that farmers 
will be pressed to increase production at this inflated price, and 
chaos as we see an influx of imported dairy products as processors in 
other countries would divert products to the U.S. It is a rollercoaster 
of milk prices that, in the end, will benefit no one and hurt everyone. 
It is the kind of rollercoaster of dairy prices that the reforms we 
included in the Farm Bill are designed to address. As milk floods the 
market, the USDA will have to buy even more milk to keep up. Economists 
at the USDA say that implementation of permanent law for dairy would 
cost at least $12 to $15 billion per year. That does not include the 
cost of storing these dairy products. The USDA may not have enough 
storage space, and once USDA fills every warehouse at its storage 
facility in Kansas City, it will have to bring the rest to Washington 
and fill every closet at the Department of Agriculture's sprawling 
South Building with cheddar cheese and powdered milk.
  The effects of these purchases will reverberate throughout the 
economy, and time is running out. The cascade of damage will be felt by 
our farmers, our food processors, our grocery stores, and by American 
consumers and taxpayers. It will also be felt by the 16 million 
Americans with jobs in agriculture. All at a time when they can least 
afford it.
  Farmers in Vermont are very concerned that we are headed over this 
dairy cliff, and inaction on the Farm Bill has left the Nation's dairy 
farmers with no safety net, since the Milk Income Loss Contract Program 
expired on September 30.
  The House of Representatives is not giving our farmers, and 
especially our dairy farmers, a fair deal. We have been sent here to do 
a job, and it is not asking too much that Congress pass a five year 
Farm Bill, and on time. We heard Senator Stabenow speaking earlier this 
week about the agricultural disaster programs that have expired, in a 
year when we have experienced record droughts, terrible freezes, and 
then historic damage to farms as Hurricane Sandy stormed through the 
Garden State.
  Also at stake are eight important energy programs that have expired 
and programs to support America's organic farmers, specialty crop 
producers and beginning farmers. Close to my heart

[[Page S8347]]

as well are the vital international food assistance programs that serve 
as a core component of U.S. efforts to fight global hunger. These have 
expired as well.
  In all, there are 37 programs that have expired, for absolutely no 
reason. Inaction on the Farm Bill by the House of Representatives is 
the perfect example of gridlock in Washington that so frustrates the 
American people. It threatens our economy. It threatens farmers. It 
harms the most vulnerable among us. And it is entirely pointless and 
avoidable.
  For all their talk of cutting Federal spending and reducing the cost 
of entitlements, House leaders and the obstructive caucus to which they 
are catering, by blocking the Farm Bill are poised--by themselves--to 
increase the Federal deficit by at least $12 to $15 billion in 2013 
alone. Let me say that again: these obstructionists in the House are 
threatening to drive up the deficit by $12 to $15 billion. While 
stalling and delaying work on the Farm Bill, saying they want further, 
draconian cuts in food assistance for the families across this land who 
are struggling the most, House leaders are about to drive us over this 
dairy cliff and exponentially increase government spending, hit 
consumers hard, and destroy the fragile economic gains we have made. 
This is not what the American people and our farmers deserve. Let's do 
what is right and pass the Senate Farm Bill into law--without further 
delay and without the political posturing.

                          ____________________