[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2671-2672]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE AGRICULTURAL ACT

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, after more than a year of debate, 
negotiation and compromise, the farm bill has finally been approved. 
This legislation is a win for the family farmers and rural economy that 
is at the heart of Upstate New York. While the final product does not 
include everything that we fought for, the farm bill's passage was of 
the utmost importance to New York. It maintains or grows scores of 
programs for our dairies, fruit and vegetable farmers, maple syrup 
producers, rural development projects and iconic New York companies 
like Hickey Freeman in Rochester, NY.
  The farm bill is unique in that it touches the lives of all Americans 
by ensuring the health of our nation's food supply. It does that by 
supporting our hard working farmers. The bill supports innovative 
agricultural research that helps make our farms some of the most 
productive on the planet. I am proud that this will include the Acer 
Access and Development Program or Maple Tap Act, which will provide 
grants to promote maple tapping and research across New York. This bill 
makes common sense reforms like eliminating direct payments and 
expanding opportunities for crop insurance and even linking crop 
insurance with conservation compliance. This bill does this all while 
providing a safety net for our farms that often face unpredictable 
natural disasters.
  However, this bill is more than just an agriculture bill; it is the 
bedrock of our food and agriculture policy for the next 5 years. The 
Farm Bill will drive our rural economy into the 21st Century by making 
investments not only in our farms, but in water, broadband, and energy 
infrastructure. This bill provides opportunities to grow small business 
in rural communities, such as helping a rural entrepreneur turn 
grandma's award winning jam into a commercial product ready to be sold 
on store shelves across the great state of New York and across the 
country. This farm bill pulls our rural and urban communities ever 
closer, as it expands opportunities for farmers markets and food hubs 
to communities that for so long have lacked access to local fresh food.
  Another very important provision in this bill that I would like to 
highlight is extension of the Wool Trust Fund. For more than a decade 
we have had in place this successful program to protect the workers at 
American manufacturers of men's suits from an unfair trade anomaly. 
While we allow finished suits to be imported into this country duty-
free from many countries, we impose a 25% duty on the fabrics that our 
domestic suit manufacturers must import. This anomaly has acted as a 
huge tax on companies that wanted to stay and manufacture here in the 
United States. Therefore, more than a decade ago, we enacted the Wool 
Trust Fund program to provide both duty refunds and licenses to import 
limited quantities of suiting fabrics at reduced duties. The 
combination of these steps helped to level the playing field and keep 
manufacturing jobs from moving abroad.
  The Farm Bill will extend and modify this program. For example, it 
will consolidate the duty refunds and duty reductions with the 
intention of maintaining the same amount of benefits for the same 
manufacturers as would have been achieved under the current program. 
While the program has been modified it continues its central purpose--
providing a mechanism to reduce the tariff burden of companies that 
stay in the United States to manufacture apparel without harming the 
domestic textile industry.
  I am proud to say that one company that benefits from this program 
today, and that will continue benefiting, is Hickey Freeman and its 410 
employees in Rochester, New York. I am proud to be a customer of this 
iconic brand. I am also proud to have stood up for these workers by 
helping establish this program more than a decade ago and extending it 
through the years. I am certain that the provisions of this bill will 
be implemented as intended so that Hickey Freeman and its employees--
along with many other companies

[[Page 2672]]

in New York and across the country--will continue to benefit fully from 
this program in the same way that it has benefited for more than a 
decade.
  From suit manufacturing in Rochester to maple taps in the 
Adirondacks, from dairies in the Central part of my state, to apple, 
pear, cherry and berry growers in the Hudson valley, from the wineries 
at end of Long Island to those near Niagara Falls, the industries that 
bring life to our rural communities will be better because we passed 
this Farm Bill. Their crops will grow fuller and stronger, and so will 
our economy.

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