Marion Berry

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, the great country western music singer Merle Haggard has a song he sings called ``Rainbow Stew.'' One of the lines in that song says, ``One of these days, when the air clears up and the sun comes shining through, we will all be drinking that free Bubble-up and eating that rainbow stew.'' Tonight, the pharmaceutical manufacturers and the insurance companies are going to have a big rainbow stew banquet for the Republicans. They are going to serve free Bubble-up. The pharmaceutical manufacturers in this country are going to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this, and they are pledging millions more in another attempt to deceive the senior citizens in this country and make them think that they are going to get a prescription drug benefit. Corporate greed in America has gone too far. It is time for this Congress to fulfill its obligation and stop the pharmaceutical companies from robbing the American people.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished friend from Texas. The gentleman has been a great leader on this issue and a great leader for the Blue Dogs and a great leader for the State of Texas and this country; and we appreciate the effort he is making here today, also. Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day when we have to come back to this floor when only a little over a year ago we still had surpluses. We had been presented with an opportunity in this country to clear up the debt. We knew that if we were prudent, if we operated in a fiscally responsible manner, if we followed or had followed the Blue Dog plan, which said, first, take care of Social Security and Medicare and pay off the debt that we owe, and let us do that, and then let us take a little bit of the money, all of this wonderful money that had been projected, let us take a little bit of that money and do the things we know we should do for our military, do the things that we know we should do for our senior citizens, make the necessary investment to be sure that this country continues to be successful economically, make the necessary investments to be sure we are secure, and then let us provide some tax cuts, let us take part of it and provide some tax cuts, we had a list of priorities there. We now have a disastrous situation facing us. In a little over a year, we are told now that we have already borrowed an additional $300 billion in less than a year, and it is going to take, by the time we get to the end of this year, another $450 billion to keep the country floating, to keep us solvent. That is $750 billion we have borrowed from our children and grandchildren. We come to this floor day after day, week after week; and all of us declare how much we love our children, how much we love our families. We talk about family values endlessly; and at the same time, we conduct our fiscal matters as a Congress as if there were no tomorrow, as if no one has to answer for this. What we are asking for, Mr. Speaker, is for all of us to sit down, let us forget this partisan stuff. It does not get us anything. We have got a serious problem. We have got a homeland security issue and a national security issue that we must address and we will address it. We have other top-priority issues that the Nation must deal with. Prescription drugs for our senior citizens. We know how to do these things. We can set the priorities and balance this budget and protect Medicare and Social Security and not pass an enormous debt on to our children and grandchildren. I cannot imagine a situation where anyone would intentionally pass on a debt to their next generation just because they were too irresponsible to deal with it themselves. This is something that the Blue Dogs have great concern about. Over and over we have presented a responsible plan to this House. We put it up for a vote and we lose, and we have been presented with the plan that got the most votes, that puts us $750 billion deeper in debt today by the end of this year than we were a year and a half ago. It puts our children and grandchildren at a tremendous disadvantage. In fact, when they are presented with the debt, the unfunded obligation of Social Security and Medicare and the other necessities that they are going to have to deal with when their time comes, I do not know how they are going to deal with it. It becomes more of a burden than they are going to be able to carry. I think, Mr. Speaker, it is time, it is past time that both sides, the Democrats and the Republican, let us sit down. We can figure this out. We can do this right. We are willing. I remember just a little over a year ago how excited the Blue Dogs were. We had a new administration come into town. We were looking forward to working with a new administration to craft a budget that would be responsible, that would pay off the debt, not add to it, but pay it off, take that burden off of our children, not make it greater. I will never forget, and I have mentioned this several times, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Daniels, came to the Blue Dog meeting; and he very confidently told us the greatest fear we have, the thing we are most concerned about, is that we are going to pay off all of the debt, the economy is going to be doing so well that we are going to pay off all of the debt and no one will be able to buy a U.S. Treasury bond. That is almost laughable. In fact, we would laugh about it today if it was not so serious. It is not a laughing matter when we talk about passing this horrendous debt on to our children and grandchildren. It is not a laughing matter when we talk about we are squandering the opportunity to make Social Security and Medicare permanent, make sure that Social Security and Medicare are there for the senior citizens that are going to come into the program in the next 15 to 20 years. This is not a laughing matter. It is a very serious matter. So, Mr. Speaker, what we are asking for is let us sit down at the table together. Let us work this problem out. Let us do the right thing for America. Let us do the right thing for our children and grandchildren. Let us do the right thing for this country, and let us honor the people that founded this country, the people that fought for this country, the people that gave their lives so that this great Nation of freedom and liberty could exist. Let us not squander this opportunity that we still have to do the right thing.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, on June 4 of this year, the administration amended executive order 13180 dated 12/7/2000 by amending the language that deemed air traffic control as an inherently governmental function. This is the first step toward privatization of air traffic control, and it is a slap in the face to our Nation's wonderful air traffic controllers. On 9/11 our air traffic controllers safely landed 5,000 planes in 2 hours without an error. They did an incredible job. What else must be done to prove that the current system that we have that is in place works well? Mr. Speaker, I do not want my family or other Americans to board commercial airliners that the traffic in the sky is controlled by the lowest bidder. I think we have tried that with airline security and have clearly demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that it does not work. I rise today in opposition to this plan to privatize air traffic control.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor one of Arkansas's finest citizens, Charles H. Murphy, Jr. I am proud to recognize Mr. Murphy in the Congress for his invaluable contributions and service to his profession, his family, his State and this Nation. Mr. Murphy was born in El Dorado, Arkansas on March 6, 1920, and became head of the Murphy family enterprise at the age of 21 after his father suffered a stroke in 1941. Mr. Murphy served in the armed forces for three years during World War II, and returned to El Dorado in 1946 to begin expanding the family business which was subsequently incorporated in 1950. Under his leadership, Murphy Oil grew from a small oil and gas operation in southern Arkansas into a publicly-held, integrated oil company with international operations and scope. Mr. Murphy served as President of Murphy Oil from 1950 to 1972, Chairman and CEO from 1972 to 1986 and Chairman from 1986 to 1994. He retired from the board of directors in 2001 and was named director emeritus of the Company. As a leader and spokesman for the oil industry, Mr. Murphy lectured widely in the United States and Europe where his audiences included OPEC oil ministers and the heads of national oil companies. He debated then-Senator Mondale on national television on the issues of price controls and divorcement in the oil industry. He also debated Lord Kearton, chairman of the British National Oil Corporation, on the role of national oil companies. He served as chairman of the National Petroleum Council and as a director of the American Petroleum Institute where he also served as president of the 25 Year Club of the Petroleum Industry. For his work in bringing together oil industry leaders and national leaders of the environmental movement, Mr. Murphy was honored by both. He received the National Wildlife Federation's citation for outstanding individual service, and was a 1999 winner of the Chevron Conservation Award. In 1999, Mr. Murphy was one of the first honorees of the University of Arkansas School of Business Hall of Fame. Educated in the public schools of Arkansas and by private tutors, Mr. Murphy received doctor of laws degrees from the University of Arkansas in 1966 and from Newfoundland Memorial University in 1995. Keenly interested in education issues, Mr. Murphy served 17 years on the Arkansas Board of Higher Education, 10 years as trustee of Hendrix College and established the Murphy Institute of Political Economy at Tulane University. He also served as a director of the Smithsonian Institution and was a trustee of the Ochsner Medical Institutions. He was a member of the Arkansas Business Council and served as chairman of its K-12 subcommittee. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette called him ``a kind of one-man renaissance, a man of Arkansas and the Caribbean and the world.'' I couldn't agree more. Charles Murphy was my friend, and I forever will be honored by that friendship. On behalf of the Congress, I extend sympathies to Mr. Murphy's family, and gratitude for all he did to make Arkansas and the world a better place.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of good things in this bill. It will provide appropriations to help us fight the war on terrorism. It will provide some good things for our veterans. All of these are things that we all support. But I have to tell my colleagues, Mr. Chairman, the way that the attempt is being made to deceive the American people in the dark of night to make it possible to add to the debt of our children and grandchildren, to steal the Social Security trust fund, to endanger the well-being of our senior citizens makes me want a dip of snuff, and I do not even use tobacco. I grew up in a community where there were a lot of bootleggers. They look like paragons of virtue compared to this crowd. The great country music singer Merle Haggard wrote a song called ``Rainbow Stew.'' I just want to paraphrase this. He said, ``When a Member of Congress goes through the Capitol door and does what he says he will do, we will all be drinking that free Bubble-up and eating that rainbow stew.'' Well, I am here to tell my colleagues we are getting fed a big pot of rainbow stew tonight. If this is an emergency wartime appropriations bill, why does it have a stealth effort to raise the debt ceiling to put more debt on our children and grandchildren? Why does it do that? If that is what this is about, why do we not just have an appropriations bill? We do not need one of these chicken-hearted rules that allows for some kind of stealth effort to put more debt on our children and grandchildren, to threaten our senior citizens with losing their Social Security. Why would we want to do something like this? Why not have a vote up or down on whether or not to raise the debt ceiling? Let us face reality. All the money is gone. It has all been spent. This time last year we had money in the bank. We were paying off debt. I remember so well the Director of the Office of Management and Budget coming to the Blue Dogs and saying, our greatest fear is that we are going to have so much money that we are going to pay off all the debt and there will not be any U.S. Treasury bonds. Well, dear heart, you can rest easy tonight. There is going to be a U.S. Treasury bond available for as far as anybody can imagine, and our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay it off. That is not right. I can tell my colleagues that they may do it just because they have more votes; but my colleagues are not going to do it without me coming to this well and raising the issue, and I am not going to go back home and face my children and grandchildren. I am not going to look at my three grandchildren, and they are to me just as dear as anything can possibly be, just like everybody's grandchildren are, and let them look at me 20 years from now, if I am still around, and say, Granddaddy, why did you not do something about that? Why did you let that happen? Why did you put this debt on us? Why did you destroy this country over the only reason you had that was to stay in power and reduce taxes on the wealthiest people in this country? Why did you do that? When I have to face that question, I at least will be able to stand before them and say, I did everything I could do; but we were not in the majority. We did not have any control over that. I ask my colleagues to think about what they are doing. Think about what they are doing. All we ask is for my Republican colleagues to sit down with us in this bipartisan spirit I have heard so much about, and if this is bipartisanship, I am a space scientist, and everybody who knows me knows that is not true. We hear about bipartisanship, but yet we have this single-handed attempt to cram this down our throats. Let us sit down in a bipartisan way. Let us do an honest budget. Let us recognize what we are doing and not steal from our children, our grandchildren, and our senior citizens to do it. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues not to pass this bill.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, the United States House of Representatives recognizes the Lyon College Concert Choir on the occasion of their performance at the National Cathedral on March 17, 2002. Lyon College, located in Batesville, Arkansas, offers a liberal arts education of superior quality in a personalized setting. A selective, independent, undergraduate, residential teaching and learning community affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Lyon encourages the free intellectual inquiry essential to social ethical and spiritual growth. With a rich scholarly and religious heritage, Lyon develops, in a culture of honor, responsible citizens and leaders committed to continued personal growth and service. The Lyon College Concert Choir is directed by Dr. Michael Arshagouni and its members are: SOPRANO: Cecilia Bogowith--Gainesville, MO; Briana Bopp--Black Rock, AR; Heather Copeland--Albuquerque, NM; Patricia A. Eusterbrock--Old Monroe, MO; Amber Haskins--Everton, AR; Laura Higginbottom--Ash Flat, AR; Annicia Johnson--Little Rock, AR; Laura Lofton--Hughes, AR; Bobbi Love--Cabot, AR; Jessica R. Miller--Cave City, AR; Melanie Morrison-- Jonesboro, AR; Angela Polsgrove--Little Rock, AR; Lynsey M. Russell-- Little Rock, AR; Rebecca Sharp--Evening Shade, AR; Meredith Shipman-- Mountain View, AR; Jennifer Stottman--Russellville, AR; ALTO: Kristy Barrington--Sherwood, AR; Edlira Bashari--Tirana, Albania; Holly Collins--Cabot, AR; Kristi Dement--Hot Springs, AR; Elizabeth Gabbard--Fort Smith, AR; Heather LeAnn Grantham--Hominy, OK; Teryn R. McDuff--Biloxi, MS; Chloe D. Robinson--West Memphis, AR; Shannon D. Spears--Blytheville, AR; Shannon Sullivan--Newark, AR; Allison Turner--The Woodlands, TX; Sarah Williams--Batesville, AR; Valarie Layne Wylie--Benton, AR. TENOR: Stephen Briner--Walnut Ridge, AR; Josh Broughton--Benton, LA; Matt Buchanan--Perryville, AR; Laura Hignight--Benton, LA; Mike Horan-- Omaha, NE; Brian Phillips--Batesville, AR; Kent Runnells--Little Rock, AR; Shannon Schoeller--Rogers, AR; Russ Swearingen--Rogers, AR; BASS: Joshua Barnes--Vilonia, AR; Tony Davis--Judsonia, AR; Steven Jones--Los Alamos, NM; Andrew Kuszak--Rogers, AR; Cory McDaniel-- Jonesboro, AR; Stephen A. Moore--Chicago, IL; William Lucas Patton-- Forrest City, AR; Rob Yates--Jonesboro, AR; Jason Clark Zellmer--Little Rock.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to two great American citizens, and I am proud to recognize Christine and Oral Edwards in the Congress for their invaluable contributions and service to Arkansas on the occasion of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Chris, the daughter of Frank and Effie Austin of Blytheville, and Oral, the son of Jesse and Grace Edwards, were married on May 11, 1952 at the First Baptist Church in Blytheville, AR by Reverend David McPeak. The story of their meeting is practically lifted from the pages of a Hollywood movie script. They met in the summer of 1951 when Chris was home from Southwestern College and working at Farmer's Bank and Trust in Blytheville. A friend of hers had told her about Oral, and she wanted to meet him. She knew that he worked at the grocery store on Saturdays, so she went to shop with her parents one Saturday. Oral ended up carrying out her family's groceries to the car. When he turned to go back in the store, she called out his name. When he turned around, she knew it was him, and she invited him to go to church with her. He didn't go, but later called for a date. They dated for about a year and decided to get married. They had no money and no car. Friends chipped in to help with the wedding arrangement, and they had a beautiful wedding. The rest as they say is history. The Edwardses have two children and six grandchildren. Steve, their first born, lives in Marianna with his wife, Laura. Steve and Laura have three children. Ashley, the oldest, lives in Maumelle with her husband Paul Rowton. Leigh is a student at Arkansas State University, and Steve, Jr., the youngest, is a first grader at Lee Academy. Susan, their daughter, lives in Memphis, Tennessee with her husband, Dr. Jim DeRossitt. Susan and Jim also have three children. Jay, the oldest, lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Leigh. Frank attends Christian Brothers High School, and John, the youngest, is a student at Woodland Presbyterian School. Oral and Chris became permanent residents of Forrest City in 1962, when they moved here to establish a new location for their grocery store business at the intersection of Division Street and Highway 70. The business has since grown and Oral and his son, Steve, now own GES, Inc., which operates businesses in Arkansas named Food Giant, FG Express, Tobacco Warehouse and EDPROP Development Co. In addition to being a business leader, Oral has also been an active community leader. Oral has served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of East Arkansas Community College and the Baptist College of Medical Sciences in Memphis, Tennessee. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Baptist Memorial Health Care Company, in Memphis. Chris, not to be outdone by her husband, has also played an important role in a number of community organizations. She has been a member of the Garden Gate Garden Club and the Forrest City Musical Coterie for more than 40 years. She has also been an active member of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. The state of Arkansas is a better place because of my close fiends Oral and Chris Edwards, and I am proud to call them my friends. On behalf of the Congress, I extend congratulations and best wishes to these faithful public servants on the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I want to, first of all, thank the chairman, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Combest) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). I think every one of us in this body owe them our respect and gratitude for the great job they did on this bill. There have been many things said about this bill, and if there is one thing this body stands for, it is that right for any Member to express their opinion and vote in that way, and I respect that. We have had many things said about this bill, but I can tell my colleagues one thing, we have people come and talk about how we are going to produce too much. Having too much food is like having too much money. It is pretty hard to do. We do not want to run out of either one of them, and when we do, we have got a major problem. This is a good bill. It is a balanced bill. It treats everyone as fairly as we can with the resources that we have at our disposal. The objective of a farm bill is food security. It is not a social program. America's farmers have served this country well. They deserve our support and to be recognized with this bill, to continue to produce the cheapest, safest food supply in the history of this country. I urge passage of this bill.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding to me and for his outstanding leadership, not only for the Blue Dog Coalition, but for this Congress and what I think are the next generations. Mr. Speaker, this is not rocket science. Anybody that can add and subtract can figure this out. We know what we need to do. A year ago at this time, the Blue Dog Coalition met with the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Daniels. He made a presentation to us at that time. He said this, and I will never forget it. He said, our greatest fear is that we are going to have so much money we are going to pay off all of the debt, and no one will have a safe place to invest their money because there will not be a U.S. Treasury bond. When we hear that said now, it seems absolutely and utterly ridiculous. To the Blue Dogs at that time, it seemed a bit risky and foolish to even think that way, but the fact is, we have squandered the surplus. We have squandered a great opportunity in this country. One thing that we know we must get under control is the spending. We know that we cannot continue to borrow and spend and pass the debt on to our children and grandchildren. The Blue Dogs have a four-point plan. We have worked diligently to come up with an honest assessment and an honest plan for what we need to do in this country to protect our children and grandchildren. We come to this floor almost on a weekly basis, and have a great debate about protecting the unborn. I personally believe that we should, and I always vote to protect the unborn. And yet, we will come here and vote for a policy that will allow us to pass massive debt on to the unborn. We vote for a policy that allows our fighting men and women to go overseas and serve this country with great distinction, and then we ask them, now, after the war is over, after their fighting is done, come back to this country and go to work, because we borrowed the money from them to pay for it. That is not right. It is immoral for us to continue to do that. Our plan would provide for the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 to be enhanced and reauthorized. It would provide that if we are going to spend additional money or we are going to reduce the amount of money coming in to the government, that we would reduce spending in a way to go along with that so we maintain a balanced budget. We provide a constitutional amendment that would allow this country to have a balanced budget without using the Social Security trust fund money to do it. It is not a balanced budget if we have to borrow the money from the Social Security trust fund to pay the bills. It is not a balanced budget if we just imagine that it is going to be balanced some day, like we have done in the past year. We cannot continue to do that. The Social Security taxes that are paid in by the senior citizens, that have been paid in by the senior citizens, and that are paid in today by the working men and women of this country are supposed to be used and set aside in a trust fund to pay the Social Security benefits when those people come of age. But right now, it amounts to only another income tax that is paid by the working men and women of this country, because we are spending every dime of it. We are not making any provisions to preserve the trust fund. We are not making any provisions to see that these obligations that we have when these people come of age to draw that money, that they are going to be able to receive it. It is irresponsible, and we should not continue to let this happen. It is amazing to me that we can have a budget this year that does not provide for medicine for our senior citizens in this country. We are going to spend money on a lot of things in this budget. We are going to appropriate money for a lot of things. Some of them are absolutely critical, but very few are more important than the good health of our senior citizens. It is amazing to me that we should allow one more year to pass in this Congress and not have a prescription drug benefit for our seniors because we have squandered the opportunity. The Blue Dogs have a plan to get out of the deficit ditch. We have a plan to prevent our children from having to pay the debts that we run up. I think it is time for the Congress and the administration to sit down, be honest, look at the real numbers, look at what we know we have to do, and not continue to pass the burden on to our children and grandchildren. One of the things I am proudest of in the time that I have served and represented the First Congressional District in the United States Congress is being a member of the Blue Dog Coalition. I think it is one of the most honest, determined groups that exist in this Congress. I think that their integrity is held together because they believe this is the right thing to do. I want to say once again how proud I am of their plan, and that I think that the Congress should take a serious look at this plan and pass these bills that we are proposing, and do something real for the future of our children.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Madam Speaker, if I may reclaim my time, I do not remember saying anything about the Senate. But having dealt with that issue, it resurrects the death tax. In the First Congressional District of Arkansas, people work hard. They save their money. They try to accumulate a small farm. They are able to do that in some cases, and they have been able to do it in the past 60 to 70 years because we had a good, strong farm program. And they pass it on to their widow. That land takes care of that widow until she is gone from this earth. If this motion to instruct were honored by the conferees, we would lose that ability for the widow to benefit from farm programs, because they would not be eligible anymore the way this is written. That is the reason I question the way it was written. It has been said over and over today that these farm programs cause overproduction. I would try to explain one more time the only reason we need to have farm programs and a safety net for our farmers in this country is to ensure the adequate production of food and fiber so that the American people do not have to depend on production offshore to get enough to eat. If this program is so bad, why do we not have a great accumulation? We do not have overproduction today. I would also make the point to have enough to eat, you have to have too much, because there is no way to gauge accurately how much crop to plant so that you produce exactly so much that the American people have enough and that they have a reasonably priced food supply and a safe food supply. What the people that support this motion to instruct do not understand is, if this were allowed to stand, if the conferees accepted this, it would be a dramatic move toward bad conservation, it would cause even more consolidation. The consolidation of American agriculture has not been driven by farm programs. It has been driven by technology. It just simply does not take as many people to produce a pound of food anymore than it did 50 years ago. That has changed. It takes a lot more equipment. It takes more expensive equipment. That is what is driving the consolidation of American agriculture. We have heard people talk today about how bad conservation needs to be dealt with, and I agree with that. But the fact is poor folks have poor ways. When our farmers are nearly broke, they cannot take the necessary conservation measures that they would like to take and that they know they need to take in some cases. They are forced to take bad shortcuts. They are forced to do things that they do not even want to do in an attempt to be an efficient producer. Over and over again, we have heard that these payment limits that have been talked about so much, and the fact is we have payment limits today. We have had payment limits since 1985. This is not something new. We have complied with those laws all along. We will comply with whatever law is written and whatever the House and Senate come out with for a farm bill, out of the conference committee with. But the fact is, that has nothing to do with the size of the farms. What we are talking about here is penalizing the most efficient producers in the world, the people that are really, really good at what they do, we are talking about making it much more difficult for them. We have to have a safety net, as I said, because it is a national security issue to have enough food supply within our own country. If we do not have a safety net in times like this when the value of the dollar is so high that it takes American producers out of the market through no fault of their own, it is not because of overproduction. It is because the value of the dollar is so high that you can go to Argentina or Brazil and buy half, again, as much product as you can in the U.S. for the same amount of money. When our farmers are caught in that situation, they have to be protected. This is the only way we have of doing that. That is why we need a farm bill. That is why you have to have payment limits set at least high enough so that you can have an economically viable unit and so that that producer can be economically efficient enough to be the provider of the cheapest food and fiber supply in the history of the world. I would also point out that if this motion to instruct conferees were passed, it would ignore that there is a lot more to farming and to being a successful farmer and a successful producer than just sitting on a tractor. It would be denying benefits to farmers who may not labor but handle finances and risk management. It would create a situation where it would be very difficult for some of our producers because they do not spend all their time in the field. It would put in question almost any producer. I think one thing that has been missed by the upper Midwest is that the rules that this would put in place for many producers of corn and soybeans in the Midwest, especially the ones that use no-till technology, would not even qualify themselves if they were required to put in a thousand hours before they were eligible. Many of those producers that this bill is intended to help very likely would not qualify under these rules. I think that they need to be studied much more carefully before we even think about adopting these. There are many things that have been said that just simply are inaccurate. I would go back to my original statement. The people that support this motion to instruct simply do not understand the food and fiber production system in this country, and they certainly do not appreciate the incredible productivity of the American farmer. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BERRY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Once again, I want to say how much I appreciate the opportunity to stand before this House and proclaim what a wonderful job and what an extraordinary thing the American farmer is. I know the gentleman from Michigan is a good fellow. I know he means well. He does not intend to hurt anyone. And I have great respect for him. Unfortunately, I would have to say that he just simply does not understand the food production system in this country and as hard as I have tried to explain it, we still seem to be hung up on this issue. Let me just tell you what would happen if this motion to instruct were honored by the conferees. We would resurrect the marriage penalty, something we did away with last year. A divorced couple would be eligible for $175,000 more in government subsidies than a married couple. It discriminates against women. It disenfranchises women. Women would get one-fifth of what a man gets when they qualify for farm programs. There is nothing right about that. But one of the worst things it would do, and I cannot imagine that the people that wrote this really knew what they were doing when they wrote it, it would basically impose the death tax. Point of Order

Mr. BERRY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, as I have already said repeatedly this afternoon, we already have limits. No one disagrees with that. I guess what we are having a problem agreeing on is what defines a small farmer. I can tell you that when combines cost $250,000 to farmers, when tractors cost anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000, when everything else that we use is in the same price range, it does not make any difference what a group of people that come together and declare that they think there needs to be a limit applied to some of these things, it does not matter whether they think there should be a limit or not. It becomes a matter of economic reality that we have to deal with those high prices of our production input. It does not matter where that takes place, whether it be in the upper Midwest, or in the mid-South, where I come from. I would also make the point that the numbers that have just been put out here are just a part of the story. I do not think that the $150,000 on loan deficiency payment has been in question. I think it has been in everybody's bill, and I certainly do not have any problem with it. But, as I said, that is only a small part of the story. I would go back to what I said in the beginning a few minutes ago. To run the risk of disqualifying a widow that very likely is something over 70 years old and disenfranchising her just because she is not physically able anymore to manage her property and she is not going to be able to take advantage of the estate that her husband passed on to her, to run the risk of doing something like that I think is shameful; and I think it is terrible that that was put into this bill that way. Now, the gentleman from Michigan has said that there is no question in his mind that everybody that was involved in this knew what they were doing, and I will take him at his word. I would make the point that if you look at the entire bill, what this limit really does in California, a cotton farmer would hit the limit at 355 acres. In Georgia, a cotton farmer would hit the limit with 682 acres. So that is a considerable difference from the numbers from the CRS that were just put out a few minutes ago. I also think that we cannot stress enough the fact that this particular motion to instruct and the amendment that it supports disenfranchises women. I have never understood, I still do not understand, I do not think I will ever understand, why we would treat women differently under a farm bill than we do men. I can tell you that until the time when I came to Washington, D.C., my wife and I were full partners in my family farm. She was every bit as much responsible for any degree of success that we had. She worked just as hard as I did, and she was not entitled to anything. Now, this bill corrects that a little bit, makes it so she is entitled to one-fifth of what I would be entitled to. But why would we want to intentionally disenfranchise women and create a situation where the widows in farm country that were left with a nice farm to help take care of them the rest of their days and have a decent standard of living would be disenfranchised to the point where they would lose the benefits that helped them have a decent standard of living? I just simply do not understand why we would want to do that. I would also once again emphasize that the whole purpose of a farm bill and a safety net for our agriculture producers is to ensure that we have adequate production and processing capacity in this country, to be sure that we are able to feed ourselves for a reasonable portion of our disposable income. That is an incredibly important part of our national security. Over and over and over again we stand on this floor and belabor the point that we have not taken care of business as far as our energy supply is concerned, and I hear them talk about overproduction and I hear them talking about big farmers taking advantage and big farmers getting too much. We are talking about doing something in a farm bill that would severely damage the most incredibly successful production system that has ever existed in the history of the world. The United States farmer, the American farmer, has done the greatest job of producing a commodity of any industry that has ever existed, and very likely ever will exist; and we are talking about a system that has worked, a system that has served the American people so well. In my part of the country they have a saying, ``If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'' Well, this ain't broke, and it does not need to be fixed. I agree, there should be limits; but they should be set at a level where our producers can have an economically viable unit, and where they can have the opportunity to be successful and to do so well what they do best.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I particularly appreciate one more opportunity to come before this House and talk about the fabulous job that the American farm does every day and has done since the beginning of this great Nation. I am always amazed and surprised at the people that some way or other have gotten the idea that the best way to keep the American farmer down on the farm is to starve him to death. I hear people come to the floor and talk about millionaire farmers. I see these stories in the paper that talk about all of the payments that these farmers get, and I am intimately familiar with some of these situations. These stories are simply not true. They have payment limits imposed on them, and they comply with the payment limits. In the end what happens is under the current system the American farmer is the most productive, the most incredible production machine that there has ever been in the history of the world. At the same time, for good reasons I am sure that the Members that are proposing that this amendment be accepted and that this instruction be made, they have good intentions. They mean well. They think that they are doing the right thing. They just simply do not understand what it takes to produce the food and fiber for this country, and a good portion of the rest of the world. If our farmers are taking advantage of the farm programs as they exist today and as they have been proposed by the House of Representatives in the bill that we passed, if they are doing such a terrible job of taking advantage of the U.S. Government, why are they going broke every day? Why does every farmer in the First Congressional District feel like they are just about to lose everything they have? Why does no one want to get into the business? Why do the children not want to get into the business? The list of things that indicate that American agriculture is threatened and our ability to feed this Nation and to clothe this Nation without importing monstrous amounts of food and fiber, why is that threatened if things are going so well and these farmers are being so well taken care of by the government? Another problem that I have with this motion to instruct, Mr. Speaker, is that it is an obvious attack on women. It would provide that a woman could only draw a small fraction of what a payment limit is, but a man can draw a lot more. Over four times as much. That is just simply unfair. I cannot imagine that this House or this Congress would be willing to promote such an idea and take advantage of the great women that have worked right along with their husbands to build American agriculture into what it is today. That is something that I find absolutely offensive, and I cannot believe that we would disenfranchise one more time in this country the American woman that has worked so hard on the family farm. It creates a situation where a family would be better off if a man and wife were divorced. It would put people in a position where they would have to make that decision. All of these things are part of what is bad about this bill. I urge this House to think about it very carefully. Mr. Speaker, we talk a lot today about national security. Over and over, every day we hear about national security on this House floor, in the Senate, from the White House. All of the media is full of national security issues. We all are very aware of the problem we have because we have to import too much oil from offshore. We are in danger of creating that same situation if we allow this motion to instruct to become part of the farm bill. We are creating a situation where the American farmer simply could not have the safety net they need to stay in production in times like this when prices are low, the value of the dollar is so high that they are almost held out of the export market. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote ``no'' on this motion to instruct. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne).

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to respond to the gentleman from Arizona. This particular motion to instruct would actually help the Scottie Pippens of the world. It would add more money to that program. I would also add at this particular time, I stand by my statement that the people that support this motion to instruct do not understand agriculture and the high-technology business that it is today. It will be a long time before anybody can positively change my mind on that. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross).

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Florida for the great job he has done in his leadership on budget matters and many other things, and the courageous stand that he takes, and also my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). He has been working on these issues for all the time he has been in this body, and we all appreciate his leadership. The first thought that comes to my mind is this time last year the Blue Dog Coalition extended an opportunity to the administration, and we said we wanted to work with them. We want to do the right thing. We want to have a balanced budget, and we want to have tax cuts. We want to pay off the debt. They sent the director of the Office of Management and Budget to us. He said, we really do not need you. We can do whatever we want to do. We are in the majority, and we are going to pass this budget. We are going to do it like we want to do it. We will listen a little bit, but we have plenty of money. We have so much money that we are more worried about paying off all of the debt than we are what we are going to pass on to our children, which is a great debt, it has turned out. I would beg the administration and the Republican majority, please do not do this to our children and grandchildren. Please do not continue to run up debt and spend the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and force our children into a totally impossible fiscal situation in this country 15 years from now. Please do not do that. Work with us. That is all we are asking. Sit down and work with us. Be honest, and give us a plan so we do not destroy the future of our children and grandchildren. We want to work with them, and it just does not make any sense what we are doing. We took $5 trillion last spring, piled it up in front of the United States Capitol and burned it. Now we are acting like that money is still there. We continue to spend the Social Security trust fund. We continue to spend the Medicare trust fund. We continue to borrow money to operate on, to pass this debt on to our children and grandchildren. It is not right. We should not do it. If we were not building up more debt, we would not need to raise the debt ceiling. It would not be necessary. So all we ask of them is, give us a plan. Let us work with them. We all want to do the right thing.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I appreciate the gentleman's great leadership in this House of Representatives over many years. Almost from the beginning, he has been a great champion of fiscal responsibility. He was one of the founders of the Blue Dogs, and fiscal responsibility is our hallmark, and we are very proud of it. Mr. Speaker, I cannot begin to tell you this evening how heartbroken I am that we are here on this floor yet again tonight to talk about the fact that this country simply cannot live within its means. It is a heart-breaking thing to know that we continue to run up bills, borrow money, pass the debt on to our children and grandchildren and tell the American people everything is all right, do not worry about it. That is what is going on. Mr. Speaker, I have to ask: When is this going to stop? How long are we going to allow this to go on? When I came into this House in 1997, that was the last time we had a vote to raise the debt ceiling. We worked hard to create a situation where we would have money to pay off the debt that this generation has accumulated, and we have nothing to show for it. We worked hard in this House to get a balanced budget and to accumulate a little bit of a surplus and to create a situation where we would have the ability to pay off this debt. Just a year ago, in a Blue Dog meeting, the gentleman that is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the President's bookkeeper, the President's accountant, came to the Blue Dogs, and I will never ever forget his statement. He said, our greatest fear is that we will have so much money that we will pay off all of the debt, and no one will have a safe place to invest their money because you will not be able to buy a United States treasury bond. I almost embarrassed myself by laughing out loud right in front of him. I thought it was the most ridiculous statement I had ever heard because his plan was to create the situation that we have today. He told the Blue Dogs we are not interested, count us out when you talk about taking this surplus and taking half of it and paying down the debt because we do not want any part of that. We said, let us take a fourth of it and reduce taxes. We thought we should do something about the marriage tax penalty and the estate tax, and I still think we should have. Then we said, let us take a fourth of it and deal with some disparate spending priorities that we feel that we need to deal with. To achieve the balanced budget and the surplus that we had at that time, we had basically train-wrecked the senior citizens health care system because we have created a situation where the health care providers in this country are not going to continue to provide health care to our seniors for the small amount of reimbursement that they get. They are just not going to do it. We are about to ruin the health care system in this country for our seniors. We do not have any money for prescription drug benefits. We wrote a farm bill to try to balance the budget that bankrupted the entire agricultural community of this country and has cost us far more than we ever intended or a responsible farm bill would have cost us had we done it right. The long-term interest rates in this country have not gone down, even though we have done everything that we know to do to try to drive them down, and that is an indication that Wall Street and the world's financiers do not want any part of this. They know that we are borrowing money that we cannot pay back. They know that we are passing an economic burden on to our children and grandchildren that they cannot bear. What is going to happen? We have already spent all of the Social Security trust fund. We have spent all the Medicare trust fund. All the money is gone. And now we are being asked to raise the ceiling on the amount of money above that that we can borrow: ``Let's spend all the money we can get our hands on and then borrow some more to go with it.'' And what are we going to have to show for it? Nothing. We have not built a road. We have not built a school. We cannot point to anything that we have accomplished. Mr. Speaker, I carry this buckeye in my pocket. It is a relatively worthless little nut off a small bush in Arkansas. The squirrels will eat it sometimes. Nothing else will. Folklore has it that if you take that little nut and carry it in your pocket and rub it just right with your thumb, the oil from your skin will make it shiny and the shinier it gets, the better your health will be. It will protect you from rheumatism. It will protect you against all kind of evil spirits. And it will bring you good health. Mr. Speaker, that is what the Medicare system is going to look like in 15 years, because we have squandered the opportunity to make Medicare and Social Security whole and make sure that they are here so that our children and grandchildren do not get stricken by a horrible tax burden. Let me read to you what the GAO Comptroller General, David Walker, said just a few days ago: ``Absent substantive reform of the entitlement programs, a rapid escalation of Federal spending for Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid beginning less than 10 years from now is virtually certain to overwhelm the rest of the Federal budget.'' We are not going to be able to do anything but pay for Social Security and Medicare and pay the interest on the national debt. That is not a secure Nation. It is not a responsible Nation. It is something that we should not allow to happen. The Blue Dogs are overwhelmingly in favor of doing whatever we have to do to fight the war and the recession. But we are not willing to give the administration, or anyone else, a blank check and say, go borrow all the money you want to borrow, pass the debt on to our children and grandchildren and not even have a plan as to how we are going to deal with it. They do not even want to talk about a plan. They just say, just keep borrowing money, just keep cutting taxes more and more, and hope for the best. This same Comptroller General makes the comment that you cannot grow economically fast enough to take care of this problem once it reaches that particular spot that he was talking about. It is time for us as a Nation and it is time for this House and this Congress to be responsible and sit down and work together for a plan that will provide for the responsible fiscal operation of this country.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from California, and I particularly appreciate his efforts this evening to address this issue that we are going to be faced with very shortly. The first year I served in this House, 1997, I think was the last time that we raised the debt ceiling; and I remember for as long as I can remember the talk on this floor was that we had to have a balanced budget, that we should pay off the debt, that it is our job to be fiscally responsible. We have all heard that. I would bet there is not a Member of this House or a Presidential candidate or a Member of the United States Senate that has not sworn their allegiance to that idea, that we have to live within our means. There are certain times that one never forgets. One of mine is last year, just about this time, the new Director of the Office of Management and Budget came to the Blue Dogs and he made this statement: ``My greatest fear is that we will pay off all of the national debt and no one will be able to buy a United States Savings Bond and they won't have a safe place to invest their money.'' It is with great regret this evening that I have to tell you that those bonds are going to be available for a long, long time. The bad news is, our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay them off. We have all heard that we should run government like a business. This is no way to operate. And yet here we are going to be forced to vote to increase the debt. We should not do that until there is a plan in place to deal with this problem. We have spent all of the Social Security Trust Fund. It is all gone. There is no money left in it, and we are going to borrow a lot more to go with that. Then we are going to turn around and say to our children and grandchildren, we squandered it; we had the chance, and we did not do anything about it. We blew it. We spent it all, and now you deal with it. It is your problem. That is no way for the greatest Nation in the history of the world to operate. It is irresponsible, and we should not let this happen. Our Blue Dog Coalition has been dedicated all the time I have been around and before that to fiscal responsibility, and I am proud to be associated with all of the Members that participate in the Blue Dog Coalition because of their commitment to this one idea, that we can operate within our means, and we should operate within our means. It is a heartbreaking thing for me to think that we will spend all of the Social Security Trust Fund, and borrow more money than that, and turn around and pass that debt to our children. What responsible person would do that to his children, to his family, and what responsible Congress would do that to their country? I want to thank the gentleman from California again for his leadership in this matter, and thank him for yielding time.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a great American citizen, and I am proud to recognize Larry W. White in the Congress for his invaluable contributions and service to Arkansas and our nation. Larry has spent over 30 years with the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission (ASWCC), and currently serves as Assistant to the Director for Conservation. His career began in 1963 with the Arkansas Geology Department, and he moved over the ASWCC in 1970 as a Land Resource Specialist. I served on the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission from 1986 until 1993, including a term as chairman, so I can personally testify to Larry's professionalism, integrity, and outstanding skills and talents. But you don't have to take my word for it, because last year he was named Outstanding Conservationist by the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts for ``his lifelong contributions and accomplishments to state and national soil and water conservation.'' Part of Larry's distinguished record includes participating in the development and biennial update of the Arkansas Conservation Strategic Plan, which led to a 300% increase in funding for conservation districts in 1997; providing leadership in instituting a plan for annual district program evaluations and competitive allocation of funds to districts; providing leadership in the successful implementation of an Emergency Watershed Protection Project that aided poultry farmers after catastrophic losses in 2000; serving as State Floodplain Management Coordinator for 16 years; serving on the Board of Directors of the Association of State Floodplain Managers for two years; and helping to create the Eastern Arkansas Water Conservation Project. He also represents ASWCC on the Arkansas Conservation Partnership and the National Watershed Coalition. In addition to these conservation responsibilities, Larry also found time to serve on the Arkansas Mental Health Board, as well as the Professional Counseling Associates Board of Directors, including two years as its president. He lives in Lonoke with his lovely wife Annette, and with her he has three daughters, one step-daughter, two step-sons, three granddaughters, two grandsons, three step-grandsons, and one step-granddaughter. Arkansas is a better place because of Larry White and I am proud to call my friend. On behalf of the Congress, I extend congratulations and best wishes to this faithful public servant, Larry White, on his successes and achievements.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a great American citizen, and I and proud to recognize Florence Jones in the Congress for her invaluable contributions and services to northeast Arkansas and our nation. Florence devoted much of her 50-year nursing career to efforts to bring hospice care for the terminally ill as well as home care to northeast Arkansas. She helped to provide healthcare to the indigent and uninsured through a non-profit clinic, and served as a ``hospice ambassador,'' spending time and personal assets to take her work abroad and share her knowledge of these services with other countries. For all of these remarkable accomplishments, Florence was recognized this month with the Distinguished Service Award from the Arkansas Hospital Association. A graduate of St. Joseph's Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago, Florence began her nursing career working with the Visiting Nurses Association, the U.S. Navy, and St. Bernard's Medical Center in Jonesboro. Florence also has been actively involved in philanthropic service through the United Way, Arkansas Hospice Association, St. Bernard's Hospice, American Heart Association, March of Dimes, Arkansas State Nurses Association, and other organizations. On behalf of the Congress, I extend congratulations and best wishes to this faithful servant, Florence Jones, on her successes and achievements.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor one of Arkansas's finest citizens, Albert H. Miller. I am proud to recognize Al in the Congress for his invaluable contributions and service to his profession, his family, his state and this nation. For more than four decades, Mr. Miller served in many capacities to further the engineering profession. He was founder and President of both the Miller-Newell Engineers and the Miller-Newell Abstract Company. During his forty-one years as a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers, Mr. Miller held positions on nearly all of the Society's standing committees and task forces. In 1982, the Arkansas chapter named him Engineer of the Year, and in 2000 he was named a fellow member of the Society. However, his greatest contributions were made as President of NSPE, where he was known for his vision and tireless work. Mr. Miller created the ``NSPE GIVES YOU THE EDGE'' campaign to promote the value of membership in the Society. His dedication expanded and advanced the work of his profession. Mr. Miller's efforts extended into the community as a member and past president of the Newport Rotary International and Paul Harris Fellow, a member and past president of the Newport Area Chamber of Commerce, and member of the Jackson County Industrial Development Commission. He was a member of a number of professional organizations and held offices in several of them, including the Arkansas State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers & Surveyors, the Arkansas Society of Registered Land Surveyors, the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, the U.S. Council for International Engineering Practice, and the Engineering Advisory Council of the University of Arkansas. Albert Miller was a faithful and dedicated husband to his wife Lynette, the loving father to Alex and Allison, and the proud grandfather to three grandchildren. Throughout his life, he was dedicated to serving his fellow citizens as a leader in both his profession and his community, and he deserves our respect and gratitude for his priceless contributions. He was my friend and I forever will be honored by that friendship. On behalf of the Congress, I extend sympathies to Al's family, and gratitude for all he did to make the world a better place.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I consider it a distinct honor and privilege to be here this morning to present the newest member of the Arkansas delegation to this House. John Boozman has distinguished himself as a son, a husband, a father and a leader. He has meant a great deal to the community he comes from in northwest Arkansas. He follows a long and distinguished group that have served in that capacity from the Third District of Arkansas, one of those being present this morning, John Paul Hammersmith, and we are pleased to have him. John Boozman and his family worked together to make northwest Arkansas a better place to live and work and raise a family. He has distinguished himself in many ways and will continue to serve the Third District and do a great job for them. All of the Arkansas delegation is very pleased today to be able to present to this Congress the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), and I think he represents a quote from one of my favorite books written by a fellow named William Alexander Percy. In that he talks about a letter that his father who was a United States Senator from Mississippi wrote to a friend and in it he says, ``I guess our job is to make the world a better place in as much as we are able, remembering that the results will be infinitesimal and then attend to our own soul.'' I think those are the values that John Boozman will represent as he serves in this House and as he serves his district, the Third District of Arkansas. And so now let me present to you John Boozman.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, America deserves a decent airline security bill. Since September 11, we have been overrun by representatives of these private security firms. This is what they have told us: ``It's true we've done a lousy job. We've done a terrible job. It's true, we've broken laws. It's true, we've been fined millions of dollars. It's true, we have falsified records. ``But,'' they said, ``if you'll just pay us a lot more money, we'll do a better job. That is all we need is a lot more money.'' It reminds me of the time that my neighbor Miss Alice hired Good Doc to cut a tree down in her yard. Good Doc came and he looked at that tree and he said, ``Miss Alice, I'll cut that tree down for $25.'' She said, ``That's fine, Doc, that's a good deal.'' He said, ``But for $50, I'll guarantee it doesn't fall on your house.'' We are about to pass a law that lets the tree fall on our house. The American people deserve a good airline security bill. Let us pass one.

Mr. BERRY

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment, and I want to join with my colleague from Mississippi this morning in support of this amendment. The catfish industry in America is a very innovative, creative industry. My father was one of the pioneers in that industry. I think he would be terribly disappointed today to see what we are allowing to happen as basafish are being brought into this country and mislabeled catfish or mislabeled delta fresh. They are two completely different products. They are genetically different. This would be the same as calling a cat a cow, and we just simply should not allow it. The Vietnamese basafish claim to be delta fresh. There is no way that this can be possible and it misleads our customers. The Vietnamese basafish are raised using cages thrown into the Mekong River, one of the most polluted watersheds in the world. It is costing our producers about 10 to 20 cents a pound as they try to stay in business. They are struggling right now. They have a very difficult marketplace because of the situation that this basafish import has created. This price differential has made it so that our producers are no longer profitable. We simply cannot continue to let unsafe, mislabeled product destroy our catfish producers in this country. Delta farm-raised catfish are of the highest quality. They are clearly what the consumers want, and we should not allow the mislabeling of Vietnamese basafish to continue and to mislead our consumers.

Mr. BERRY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I want to say what a wonderful job the chairman and the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture have done. I appreciate very much the hard work the gentlemen have put into this. Mr. Chairman, I also want to say that I think the sponsors of this amendment mean well. The people that support this amendment have the best of intentions. When I ran for office first in 1996, it was interesting to me that all of my opponents suddenly had become farmers. If they were not farmers themselves, in some way they could contrive, they will know a farmer or their grandfather was a farmer or they would know a lot about a farmer or they had seen a farmer someplace or they had seen a crop someplace. But they all wanted to be related to farmers in some way or another. I found that interesting today that suddenly we have this great outpouring of knowledge about agriculture in this body. I would suspect, and I do not know for sure, that none of the sponsors of this amendment, and very likely none of the people that have spoken in favor of it, have ever raised a crop or produced any significant amount of food. I would submit, Mr. Chairman, that our job is to make sure that this country has a food supply, a reliable, safe, reasonably priced food supply, and in the effort to produce this, we must protect our air and water quality, and that is what this base bill does. It has been said over and over that our food policy in this country and our farm policy in this country is a failure. How can we say that when our producers are the best there has ever been, they are the most efficient and we have the most reliable, the safest and the most reasonably priced food supply of any Nation in the world? Our farmers are on the edge. They simply are not going to do it any more. I would submit to the Members a report about USDA's last quarterly stocks estimate. One of the last paragraphs in that report says if there is one thought for the Members to be left with regarding today's stock report, it is that U.S. stocks of every commodity except corn are smaller today than a year ago, and in some cases dramatically smaller. Our stocks of food in this country are shrinking. The national security interest is served by our farmers being able to stay in business. Certainly they are not getting rich. Most of them are not even making the cost of production, but one thing I can tell my colleagues that they do not need is for someone else to create one more way where the Federal Government can come and tell them what they have to do with their land. This amendment would destroy the safety net and drive production offshore, and it most certainly would cause consolidation, and if we want to see what corporate farms really look like, we can see what the result of this amendment would be because it would cause dramatic consolidation. The worst thing we can do to conservation is to continue to have a situation where our farmers cannot stay in business. Poor folks have poor ways and there is nothing they can do about it because that is all they have to work with. We do not need a social engineering program. We need a balanced bill and that is what this base bill is. I wonder, if this amendment is such a good idea for farmers, why in the world is there not one, not one farm organization supporting this bill? I think that pretty well says it.