[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9390-9391]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        IMPROVING THE FARRM BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the House is in the process this week of 
dealing with the most important bill that almost no one has paid any 
attention to. I'm talking about the FARRM Bill. It goes far beyond 
dealing with needs of rural and small town America.
  It's going to involve, with all likelihood, given the way the past 
farm bills have exceeded their budget estimates, it's very likely to be 
over $1 trillion.
  The FARRM Bill is actually getting better, slowly but surely, but it 
has a long way to go to get the most value out of this bill for 
America's farmers and ranchers, for the people who eat and for 
protection of the environment.
  Mr. Speaker, this week I will be offering some amendments that I hope 
will be made in order that will try and coax more value out of this 
process. The first and foremost, based on legislation I've introduced, 
the Balancing Food, Farm, and Environment Act, would strengthen the 
environmental quality incentives program to have stricter payments, so 
we're not putting too much money into any one project, and would 
disallow spending for large factory farms, but provide additional 
support for farmers who want to transition to production techniques 
that use fewer pesticides or antibiotics and stretch those conservation 
dollars further.
  I also have an amendment that would reform the Conservation Reserve 
Program to direct more money to conservation enhancement and continuous 
conservation reserve subprograms to target the most environmentally 
sensitive areas and reenroll higher priority lands, providing more 
stability for farmers, better results for the taxpayers, and more 
flexibility at the State level.
  Third, and perhaps most important, an amendment I'm cosponsoring, 
along with Mr. Chaffetz, would apply reasonable limits for means 
testing crop insurance. The crop insurance program needs greater 
scrutiny by Congress. It is an area where the Federal Government 
provides huge subsidies to insurance companies to sell and service the 
policies. It pays most of the indemnities when there are losses and 
generous subsidies to make the premiums cheaper for farmers.

[[Page 9391]]

  Today, in The New York Times, there was an article that talks about 
the fraud and waste in the program that, really, we haven't zeroed in. 
There are clear areas of abuse that need more attention.
  My friend Mr. McGovern had an amendment that said before you slash 
nutrition, at least have the rate of fraud and abuse down to the same 
level as food stamps. I think that's a good proposal.
  The amendment that I have introduced with Mr. Chaffetz, it would put 
a limit of $750,000, beyond which we would no longer subsidize the crop 
insurance for the large agribusinesses. It's not that they couldn't 
have crop insurance; it's just the taxpayer will not be on the hook.
  It's important for us to start paying attention to the crop insurance 
program. As we, theoretically, get rid of direct payments, although we 
still are going to have direct payments for cotton, and I have an 
amendment on that as well, it's important to look at the overall 
structure of this program. We don't want to be in a situation where, 
actually, we're going to end up paying more for crop insurance than the 
cost of traditional commodity programs proposed by the House and the 
Senate, and that there are not incentives to be able to use it 
efficiently and to root out fraud and abuse.
  I would strongly urge my colleagues to look at amendments like I have 
proposed, and others. Look at how the FARRM Bill, the most important 
environmental nutrition and economic development for small towns and 
rural America, can be done better.
  It's past time to have a farm bill that is environmentally sound, 
that is cost effective and targets areas that need the help the most. 
This ought to be an area where we can follow through on the desire to 
get more value out of tax dollars while we help more people.
  I look forward to the debate this week. I hope it is robust, and I do 
hope that we'll be able to debate the wide range of these issues that 
would make this FARRM Bill much better.

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