[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 17, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H3349]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            DRAFT FARM BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, this week, the House Committee on 
Agriculture will be marking up the most important bill that almost no 
one pays attention to, rolled out with very little fanfare. And 
actually, we can kind of understand why it has been sort of played down 
a little bit. The draft farm bill makes it more difficult to get SNAP 
benefits, while weakening the meager limits for farm subsidies and 
while cutting investments in conservation and innovative programs which 
people care deeply about.
  The draft bill cuts billions from those SNAP benefits. It creates 
burdensome work requirements for caretakers of children over 6 and 
people between the ages of 50 and 59. Under this provision, people 
would have to find work or attend job training for at least 20 hours 
per week. The provisions won't do anything at all to address poverty. 
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, even for those in 
the general population, securing a job within 3 months is virtually 
unattainable.
  There will be a spirited debate about whether we ought to reduce 
nutrition for low-income people, but there are a whole range of other 
items that need to have attention.
  The commodities programs that channel 94 percent of the subsidies in 
the farm bill to people who grow six commodities. This bill will exempt 
most corporate farms from payment limits and make it easier for large 
agriculture entities to call themselves family farms and get even more 
subsidies. It gets rid of payment limits for marketing loan gains and 
loan deficiency payments and exempts partnerships, joint ventures, 
LLCs, and Subchapter S corporations from means testing, opening the 
loopholes wider.
  In the area of conservation, which matters deeply to Americans across 
the country and makes a big difference to farmers and ranchers in 
Oregon, this bill gets rid of the Conservation Stewardship Program, one 
of the largest conservation programs in the farm bill. It cuts the 
conservation title by $1 billion over 10 years and cuts funding for the 
working lands program by nearly $5 billion over 10 years, and it 
weakens the Endangered Species Act by allowing pesticides to be 
approved without considering the impact on endangered species.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the most important areas that needs our attention 
deals with local food and regional infrastructure to promote local 
sustainable agriculture. It effectively eliminates funding for farmers 
markets, value-added producer grants, and cost-sharing programs for 
organic certification by failing to reauthorize mandatory funding for 
these programs.
  Mr. Speaker, I spent the better part of 2\1/2\ years traveling Oregon 
after the last farm bill asking people what they wanted. And I will 
tell you, people in Oregon--farmers and ranchers, people who eat, 
sports people, people who are involved with food production and 
nutrition--this is not the approach that people in our community want, 
nor, frankly, by all available evidence, the vast majority of farmers 
and ranchers.
  They want to see reforms. They want to have a crop insurance program 
that isn't wasteful support for large commodity producers, but actually 
is available for people who grow food, specialty crops for nursery, and 
the wine industry. It ought to be helping beginning farmers and 
ranchers get a toehold. It ought to deal with the efforts to cut down 
food waste, to provide protection for animal welfare.
  Mr. Speaker, the draft proposal that has been released is a missed 
opportunity, a missed opportunity for the committee. But I am hopeful 
that Congress, as this process works out, will step up and do its part 
to make it better, to focus on people who eat; people who care about 
clean air, clean water; people who want to protect animal welfare; 
people who want to have a vibrant, thriving local food scene; and to be 
able to provide food security for people who are at risk.
  Mr. Speaker, we can do better. I strongly urge my colleagues to take 
a hard look at this proposal and think about what a farm bill would 
look like for their community. I think they will find this bill falls 
far, far short.

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