[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 9, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S93-S95]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



          American Farm Bureau Federation Convention and NAFTA

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I was fortunate enough this week to attend 
the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual convention in Nashville, 
where I had the opportunity to headline a discussion of the farm bill, 
along with my colleague from Kansas on the

[[Page S94]]

Senate Ag Committee and the gentleman from Texas, Congressman Conaway, 
who is leading on the House Agriculture Committee, during the 
President's commodity meeting. The American Farm Bureau hosted other 
farm groups and commodity organizations from across the country to talk 
about the next farm bill and to try to bring consensus as to what 
agriculture is looking for in farm policy.
  In my opportunity to visit with people at the Farm Bureau's annual 
meeting, in my remarks, I paid particular attention to the farm bill. 
It is a farm safety net. When we talk about a farm bill, I suppose we 
ought to highlight that only a small portion of the farm bill is 
actually related to farm programs. There are a number of titles to the 
farm bill, and most of the money in a farm bill is spent on nutrition 
programs and mostly SNAP, but there are other important components of a 
farm bill--rural development and conservation. In addition to that 
topic, which I have been on the Senate floor speaking about before, are 
food aid and support for those who are experiencing famine around the 
globe. My opportunity to be with farmers and ranchers from across the 
country gave me an opportunity to not only speak about my views as to 
what a farm bill should contain but, more importantly, for me to hear 
what they had to say that was important to them.
  Farm Bureau members from across the country made it clear to me, 
first of all, that they would like to see Congress--Republicans and 
Democrats in the House and the Senate--and the administration work 
together in a bipartisan fashion to get a farm bill done and, prior to 
that, to get a disaster relief bill completed, which I hope we will do 
yet this month on the Senate floor--both the disaster bill that needs 
to get to the President's desk as soon as possible and also a farm bill 
that needs to be completed in a timely fashion. The current farm bill 
under which we are operating expires in 2018.
  Of the things I want to highlight that I heard from Farm Bureau 
members while I was there is certainly the importance of crop insurance 
and the value it provides, particularly for those of us who live and 
farm and work in places where the weather is not often our friend, as 
well as just the challenges the current farm bill is creating in 
Kansas.
  Particularly, the safety net programs PLC and ARC don't work as well 
as they should or could. Part of that has to do with timeliness, and 
part is the inability and the difficulty in farmers having to choose 
between two programs and to predict for a long period--the life of the 
farm bill--which makes the most sense to them economically. Whether 
they are going to have high prices, low prices, good weather, or bad 
weather is a hard thing to know in the life of a farm bill. Again, 
because of the issues we have with the current farm bill, timeliness is 
important because those provisions that are less than satisfactory 
today will be extended if we aren't successful in completing a farm 
bill this year.
  While the topic of conversation generally revolved around the farm 
bill, I want to indicate to my colleagues that so much of what I heard 
was about trade, particularly about NAFTA. The reality is, 98 to 99 
percent of the mouths to feed are outside of the United States. Farmers 
and ranchers earn their livings by feeding a hungry world, and exports 
matter to us. There was a lot of concern expressed to me and among the 
farmers and ranchers who were gathered there about the potential of the 
withdrawal by the United States from NAFTA. Kansas is a good example. 
Our largest importer--the place to which we export the most 
agricultural commodities--is Mexico.
  It is not just about commodities. In addition to the commodities, 
there are manufacturing jobs related to food and food products. There 
are 36,000 jobs that generate more than $5.7 billion in economic 
activity, and approximately 14 percent of all jobs and 10 percent of 
all manufacturing jobs are tied to the food and agricultural sectors. 
So, when we talk about trade and exports, we are not just talking about 
shipping a ton of wheat or a carload of wheat to another country; we 
are also talking about all of the jobs here in the United States. It is 
not just in growing commodities and not just in raising cattle but all 
of the jobs that come from taking those commodities, turning them into 
food, and exporting the food to other countries as well.
  I have had this conversation with people within the administration 
and with my colleagues in the U.S. Senate. I do believe the tax bill we 
passed will improve the economy and that farmers, lots of other 
business men and women, manufacturers, and others will experience 
greater economic opportunity as a result of the passage of the tax 
bill. I would highlight that the tax rates are a lot less important if 
we don't have income. If something would happen in which we would not 
be exporting--for example, if there would be a withdrawal from NAFTA--
the outcome could be that the tax rates would become semi-irrelevant 
because the income levels of farmers and ranchers and those who would 
have jobs in the food sector would be significantly diminished. Less 
income means tax rates don't matter as much as they otherwise would.
  Things are really difficult in agriculture today. Commodity prices 
are at low prices historically. The challenges are great. Weather, as I 
said earlier when speaking about crop insurance, is not always our 
friend. Across Kansas, the plea is for rain or snowfall or moisture. It 
is dry statewide. The challenges the producers in my State but really 
those across the country face are low commodity prices and weather, 
which are significant. What that means is, we need every additional 
market. We cannot afford to lose any market to which we sell those 
commodities. More markets mean higher prices, and more demand means 
higher prices. Today, we need every penny we can gain on a bushel of 
corn or wheat or soybeans or grain sorghum. We need to make certain we 
don't lose markets but that we gain markets.
  I commend the President for traveling to Nashville and speaking and 
meeting with the American Farm Bureau. I believe it has been 30-plus 
years since a President attended a Farm Bureau annual convention. I 
know, in my own experience both in the House and the Senate, reporters 
have often asked me to analyze what I have heard or haven't heard in a 
President's State of the Union Address. It has always been my practice 
to listen to a State of the Union Address and hear whether a President 
speaks about agriculture, about farmers, about ranchers, about rural 
America. Here we had a President who traveled to Nashville and spent 
time with those farmers and ranchers of America, and I am pleased the 
President did so.
  I continue to encourage the administration to remain mindful of the 
role agricultural trade plays in our economy. I would indicate that our 
withdrawal from NAFTA is a high-risk strategy--a negotiating tactic, 
perhaps. It is true we have the highest quality of agriculture products 
available in the world, but other countries are very interested in 
taking our markets, and any indication that our markets are not going 
to continue gives countries like Argentina, Brazil, and others the 
opportunity to make the case that they will be stable suppliers. The 
things we raise in the United States they can sell and provide in those 
countries as well. My point is, we don't have a corner on the market, 
and any suggestion that we are not a stable supplier or that the 
trading relationship is going to diminish or disappear between two 
countries means that others are eagerly seeking to take those markets 
away from us.
  Given the impact on our Nation's economy, I urge those conference 
attendees, those people I visited with in Nashville, to continue to 
convey to all of those policymakers the importance of trade and the 
importance of trade agreements.
  The administration has a desire to develop bilateral as compared to 
multilateral trade agreements, and I encourage those negotiations to be 
ongoing today. We don't have any time to waste when it comes to finding 
new markets and trading relationships with other countries.
  Again, I appreciate the President traveling to Nashville and spending 
time with farmers and ranchers, and I appreciate the agenda he outlined 
in regard to regulatory relief, as well as the issue of broadband, on 
which the President spent a significant amount of time, providing 
technology to a part of

[[Page S95]]

the country that has, in many instances, been lacking or woefully 
inadequate.
  But the bottom line is that rural America needs income. We can do 
lots of things to improve the quality of life in rural America, but in 
the absence of farmer success, in the absence of a farmer and rancher 
earning a living, the ability to attract our children or others to come 
back to the farm and the ability to retain our young people in the 
community to work on a farm diminishes greatly.
  One of the questions I received was from a young lady studying in 
Texas, and this was her question: What are you doing to make certain 
that young people have a chance to be farmers? While my answer was less 
than perfect--it is a hard one to answer--it is an important question. 
The reality is that the chances of young people having the opportunity 
in agriculture to earn a living is totally dependent upon the economic 
success of those individuals in agriculture today and what the future 
holds. We can find a few programs that might encourage young people to 
be able to enter agriculture as a profession and as a career, but the 
reality is that it will only work when they are earning a good living, 
and that comes, once again, from the safety nets, including crop 
insurance, which will be included in a farm bill as it works its way 
through Congress this year, but also in the opportunity to see that 
every market around the globe is available to the U.S. farmer and 
rancher so that he and she will earn a living and so that they will 
increase the chances that their sons and daughters have the opportunity 
to work side by side with them into the future.
  I especially want to thank a few people from the American Farm Bureau 
Federation for allowing me to attend and inviting me to attend and to 
speak--certainly, President Zippy Duvall, the president of the American 
Farm Bureau Federation, from Georgia; Dale Moore, a Kansan who is at 
the American Farm Bureau Federation; and Mary Kay Thatcher, their long-
time government affairs person. All of those individuals at the 
American Farm Bureau Federation do their job so well, but I especially 
want to acknowledge the friendship and support of those three 
individuals.
  I am reminded that no matter where we go, farmers and ranchers have a 
lot in common. In addition to their economic importance to communities 
across Kansas and around rural America, it is farmers and ranchers that 
still today provide a sense of what is right in America--an 
understanding of right and wrong, an understanding of the value of 
life, integrity, character, and values. It is something that is 
important not just to rural America but to our entire United States of 
America. So thank you to the farmers who visited with me. Thank you to 
the farmers who gave me the opportunity to speak with them and listened 
to me. Please know that I am happy and will continue to roll up my 
sleeves to work with my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats--the 
Senator from Kansas, the chairman of the Ag Committee; and the Senator 
from Michigan, the ranking member, Ms. Stabenow. Let's get a good farm 
bill done. Let's get it done on time, and let's all work together to 
make sure economic activity is alive and well and trade flourishes 
between the United States and the rest of the world.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I believe that my distinguished 
colleague and friend, Senator Blumenthal, will be joining me on the 
floor. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning 
business for such time as I may require and, at the conclusion of my 
remarks, that Senator Blumenthal be recognized to make his remarks on 
the same subject.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.