Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I am constrained on behalf of a Member on our side to object to the Murkowski amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself and Mr. Kohl, which I think has been cleared on the other side, dealing with the Wetland Reserve Program which would allow additional wetland reserve acreage to be added to the program as long as non-Federal funds were used. I ask that it be reported.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, first, let me say that my good friend, the distinguished manager of the bill and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Agriculture Appropriations, and I very seldom disagree, and we have worked on a number of bills when I was chairman of this subcommittee and now the last 2 years he has been chairman of the subcommittee, and I think we have worked together well and produced really good bills for the Senate's consideration. This is one of those rare occasions when we disagree. I feel very strongly, and have for many years, that the Market Promotion Program, recently renamed the Market Access Program, is just short of outrageous. When I first got involved in it, the General Accounting Office had just done a study. We were putting millions of dollars in a program to encourage McDonald's to sell Big Macs in Moscow. In addition, we were spending money to encourage one of the big companies in my own State, Tyson Foods, a company I am more than happy to champion on most occasions, to advertise their products overseas. Further, Gallo wine was a big recipient. The liquor industry was getting millions to export liquor. I said last year, where is the Christian Coalition when we need them? But we finally, through the determined efforts of the Senator from Nevada, last year were able to change the people who were eligible to put a little bit of sense in it. We made a substantial contribution to common sense last year on the Senate floor, but unfortunately the conferee committee was not satisfied until they worked in a loophole big enough to drive a Fortune 500 company through. Having said that, let me say if I had a chance to eliminate the whole program as it currently operates at this moment, if I had the power to do it, I would be more than happy to do it. But at least because of the efforts of the Senator from Nevada, we have been able to make it a little more palatable. But think about this, Mr. President. We have capped the Export Enhancement Program now for 1997 at $100 million. But when you take the Export Enhancement Program, Public Law 480, which has been on the books for decades--and there are three titles in that program, I, II, and III, all designed and calculated to enhance agricultural exports-- everybody is for agricultural exports. The USDA also has the GSM Program as an export tool. There are the COAP and SOAP Programs. If it were not for agricultural exports, the trade deficit in this country would be really staggering. I am not sure what the correlation is in the amounts between how much oil we import from around the world compared to how many agricultural products we export, but I think the two are very similar. That will give you some idea how staggering the deficit would be if we did not do a lot of agricultural exporting. But when I think of the programs that run into hundreds of millions of dollars to export agriculture products and then here is this questionable--well, it is not insignificant. It is $90 million. Where I come from, that is considered sizable. Last year, we were able to cut that program from $90 million to $70 million, and this year, lo and behold, it is back to $90 million. So while we have been able to get the Gallo Bros. and McDonald's and people like that out of the program, at least directly, and allow cooperatives such as my own Riceland Foods, and their farmer-members, to benefit from the program, we should certainly not in the days of budget constraints that we are experiencing now be raising that program by about 25 percent. So, Mr. President, I will not belabor it. I see the Senator from Nebraska here. He, apparently, wants to offer an amendment. I do not want to delay his opportunity to do that. But I say I am more than happy to cosponsor the amendment of the Senator from Nevada, which does not eliminate the program but simply puts the funding level from $90 million back to $70 million, where we put it last year. I yield the floor. Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the amendment of the Senator from Arizona is arbitrary at best and capricious at worst. The year 1995 culminated a series of cuts in agricultural research over a period of years. In other words, agricultural research funds had been cut every year for several years. In 1995, for the first time in this Nation's history, agricultural yields per acre failed to increase. That was on an apples-and-apples basis, where rainfall and so on was taken into consideration. Now, the suggestion is, and I am not familiar enough with that study to know, but the suggestion is that as we have cut agricultural research money, we are finally being caught up by lower yields of agricultural products per acre. When I was a youngster, 15 or 20 bushels of soybeans per acre in much of my State was ordinary. Today, even unirrigated beans ought to make 30 to 40 bushels per acre. Rice, I can remember when 50 to 75 bushels of rice per acre was a big crop, and today it is not uncommon, at all, in my State, for rice farmers to make 200 bushels of rice per acre. Cotton. When I was a kid, because we did not have any antidote to the boll weevil, a half-bale of cotton to the acre was considered a pretty good crop. And everybody knows what Norman Borlaug did for wheat production in this country. All of those things were not accidental. They were done because the Federal Government put money into agricultural research. Right now, the fire ant is moving north. Southern Arkansas is covered with fire ants. They do a tremendous amount of damage. Killer bees are moving up from Mexico. Mr. President, I am one of the people who think we probably made a mistake when we eliminated the honey program. The honey program cost very little. The reason I had real trouble with that amendment is because bees pollinate plants; 15 percent of all the pollinization in this country is done by native honey bees. The killer bees coming up from Mexico are killing our bees, and, in addition, there are strains of virus and other threats to honey bees that need to be understood. That takes research. Once we understand the problems, solutions will follow. I saw a story the other day that was interesting to me because the cranberry farmers of Massachusetts, for example, are getting terribly upset because they depend on bee farmers to bring their hives to their crops and pollinate them. I am not sure New Hampshire does not have some crops similar to that, which honeybee farmers bring into New Hampshire. And now the average life of a beehive has gone from 3 years to 1 year. Oh, yes, we spent Federal dollars every year subsidizing the honey industry through research. But I can tell you that is peanuts--if you will pardon the expression--compared to the benefit that honey bees do for the American farmers in pollinating their crops. The Senator from Arizona mentioned aquaculture. Thirty years ago, the farmers of Arkansas started raising catfish, domestically raised catfish. And all the world, if they are not already familiar, should know that it is the most beautiful, delicious, delicate, succulent fish ever known. We went into the catfish farming business almost out of necessity because we irrigate our rice crops and we store the water in the wintertime. The farmers decided that as long as they have these big ponds of stored water that they use to irrigate rice with, why not figure out another use for those rice irrigating ponds. My predecessor in the U.S. Senate, Bill Fulbright, helped come up with the idea of raising catfish in those ponds. Mr. President, would you like to know how many pounds of catfish we could raise a year per acre? Seven-hundred pounds. And so at least we started a couple of catfish research projects called aquaculture--all fish-raising is aquaculture. We have one in Mississippi and one in Arkansas. In Arkansas we think continued research is important and 2 years ago we made substantial investments to improve our aquaculture research facilities in Stuttgart. The 1996 farm bill redesignated that facility as the National Aquaculture Research Center, and I can tell you we are all very proud of it. Some of the magazines called it a $7 million fish farm. It had nothing to do with fish farming beyond its application of new information for fish farmers; it was all research. But over the period of the last 30 years, because the Federal Government has put money into fish farming research, catfish farming research, production of catfish per acre has gone from 700 pounds per acre per year to 4,400 pounds per acre per year. And unless we continue to fund agriculture research, we are going to be sitting around the breakfast table looking at each other wondering what we are going to eat that day. On the front page of the Metro section of the Post this morning there was an interesting article concerning blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay? The crop this year is so sparse that 500 crab pickers are out of work. And the ones who are working are working 3 days a week. Now, if somebody came in here and said they had a beautiful idea for replenishing the crab population of the bay, I might vote for it. I can assure you that those employed in the crabbing industry around Chesapeake Bay and consumers who enjoy reasonably priced crabmeat would be asking us to vote for it. The Senator from Arizona mentioned Children's Hospital in Arkansas. I can remember when the Children's Hospital in Arkansas was just a small hospital to treat severely burned children. Today, it is one of the finest state-of-the-art children's hospitals in America. And this is the third year we have put money in that. What is the Department of Agriculture doing giving money to the Children's Hospital in Arkansas? It is for a really sophisticated nutrition program. Do you know something else? The Children's Hospital in Little Rock is putting up a lot of money--millions--to build a facility to house this nutrition program. I never knew what a children's hospital was. A hospital was a hospital to me, until my daughter became ill and the pediatrician said, ``You ought to take her to Boston.'' The finest children's hospital in the world is in Boston, MA. That is where I took her. Today, I would not have to go to Boston because of the tremendous strides of the Arkansas Children's Hospital. A member of my family left a week ago and went to the emergency room of one of the hospitals in Washington, DC, and there were three residents standing there. This new doctor, a young man, walked in. He had just joined Georgetown University Hospital. When he found out I was from Arkansas, he said, ``You know, when I finished my training and started looking for a place to settle, believe it or not, I went to Little Rock, AR. I looked over your Children's Hospital, and I never got such a shock in my life. It is one of the finest facilities I have ever been in. I nearly decided to stay in Little Rock, not only because of the facilities but because of the quality of the people there.'' There is $425,000 in this bill to continue funding what we hope will be one of the finest children's and nutrition programs in the United States. Now, I can remember when it took 9 to 12 weeks to grow a broiler, a chicken, for the retail fresh market. Today, you do it in 6 weeks. Do you know why? Because of agriculture research. So I cannot say much more than the chairman has already said. He made a beautiful speech on the McCain amendment a moment ago. I hope when the time comes that the amendment, which, as I say, is arbitrary at best, will be soundly defeated. Privilege of the Floor Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Robert Hedberg, who is working for the Senate Agriculture Committee, be given floor privileges during the debate on this amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, that amendment is acceptable to this side. Has it been agreed to?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, we are scratching through here trying to find this amendment. Until we can find it, let me suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BUMPERS. All right.

Mr. BUMPERS. I noticed that the Senator and I each have an amendment which I think have been agreed to. The Senator has one to provide for electronic warehouse receipts, is that correct? Could we dispose of that one now?

Mr. BUMPERS. If I may just in a general colloquy with the distinguished chairman of the committee say that normally when we have a series of amendments to be offered on a bill like this, we sort of go back and forth between the Democratic side and the Republican side. I would suggest that that is fine if you have the Republicans and Democrats waiting to offer amendments, but that very seldom happens on this bill. And if there are three Republicans and no Democrats in the Chamber waiting to offer amendments, then I suggest we take them and not sit around waiting for somebody on the other side to come and offer amendments in order to accommodate a protocol we have used in the past. Would the Senator agree with that?

Mr. BUMPERS. There will be an objection, I say to the Senator from Mississippi, on this side.

Mr. BUMPERS. That is the reason I was asking. I hope we do not have to resume. I hope we can finish the bill this afternoon and this evening. I am pleased to join my very able colleague, Senator Cochran, in bringing to the Senate floor the fiscal year 1997 appropriations bill for Agriculture, rural development, the Food and Drug Administration, and related agencies. This bill, reported by the Senate Committee on Appropriations, provides $54.276 billion in total obligational authority for the coming year. That is $1.224 billion more than the House provided and $4 billion below the President's request. It is within the subcommittee's 602(b) allocation. This bill is nearly $10 billion below the amount under which we are operating this year, 1996. That will be $10 billion less than in 1997. The subcommittee's discretionary allocation has again been reduced this year from $13.31 billion in budget authority for 1996 to $12.102 billion for 1997. That is a reduction in discretionary spending of $529 million dollars. Unfortunately, we have received an increase of $300 million-plus in our allocation, which gets us a little closer to last year's level, but still the bottom line is that we have less to spend again this year. Mr. President, in all of my years on this subcommittee, the Agriculture Subcommittee, this year has been the most difficult. That causes me to, again, congratulate Senator Cochran for his leadership in working through these very difficult problems and crafting a bill to meets the expectations of most Senators. It meets the hard-pressed needs of rural America and, also, America's dependence on a safe supply of food and drugs. There are still plenty of unmet needs in rural America, but, given the constraints under which we are operating, this is an excellent bill. One item in the bill is very important to all of us, and it is greatly improved over last year's funding level. The Water and Sewer Program in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in my opinion, is just about the very best investment we make. It improves the quality of life for all people when they have pure water and sewer systems that are safe. Last year, these programs were severely underfunded. But this year, Senator Cochran has been able to provide an increase that almost brings us to our budget request. That is an admirable achievement. Let me digress to point out that people who travel around the world find that there are very few countries that you can visit where you can turn on the tap water and feel relatively safe in drinking it. As a matter of fact, I can only think of one or two right now where you can do that. The people who live in and near Washington, DC, have just recently found that not only happens in other countries but it happens right here in the United States in some of the major metropolitan areas. In other areas, this bill provides level funding for the WIC Program--women, infants and children. Historically, this program has witnessed annual increases in funding that have actually exceeded the caseload. So we have been carrying over money in the WIC Program. This program has accumulated, and it has reduced the pressure on us to continue increasing the amount of money every year. Even considering the general budget constraints, we are within reach of full funding for WIC, a goal which I believe is shared by every Member of the U.S. Senate. As WIC administrators work this coming year to provide nutritional assistance to women, infants, and children, I hope that next year we will finally reach the goal of full funding and the more important goal of full participation. Last year, Congress passed and sent to the President a new farm bill. This year, when the bill was considered by the House, a number of provisions were included to change some of the underlying philosophy of the farm bill. I did not vote for the farm bill. I did not like it, and I still do not like it. But that is beside the point at this stage of the game. Contracts that farmers all across America thought would guarantee them payments for 7 years were being reduced by the House Appropriations Committee even before the farmers got their first payment. Regardless of my views of the so-called freedom to farm payments, we need to remember that farmers are now in the middle of their growing season. Their investments are on the line, and they deserve to know what to expect and that the rules are not going to be changed in the middle of the game. The chairman has already alluded to the fact that he hopes Senators will not try to redebate that bill. In the bill before us, we have taken great pains not to amend the basic rationale for last year's farm bill. There is one major concern I have that deserves mention. When the President's budget was presented to this subcommittee, loan authority assumptions were much too high to be met considering the small subsidy provided. Mr. President, let me just explain that. Every loan program is scored by OMB and the Congressional Budget Office as to how much money you have to assume you are going to lose. If you are going to loan $1 million, you have to put some amount in there for what the banks would call reserve for loan losses. That is called the subsidy rate. The subsidy rate in this bill as provided by the administration, in my opinion, is much too small to fund the authority of loans set out in all of these different Federal programs. In my opinion, we are not going to be able to loan as much unless we have a supplemental appropriation sometime next spring to raise that subsidy level. We are including in the managers' package an amendment that will allow the Secretary to transfer excess WIC funds to meet the needs of loan programs such as those tied to water and sewer programs in rural housing. Mr. President, before anybody thinks that is cruel and taking money from women, infants and children to fund a subsidy rate for water and sewer programs, bear in mind that this is money not used by WIC. This is similar to an amendment I offered last year that provided an additional $36 million in the Water and Sewer Program with no detrimental effect to the WIC participation. This amendment will help, but it probably will not provide enough additional budget authority to achieve full program levels. That is the reason I mention additions to the subsidy in some supplemental appropriations next spring. I hope in future budget submissions, the administration will take greater care to make sure that rising interest rates or other economic conditions do not provide falsely optimistic assumptions of what may be the reality on the first day of the following fiscal year. I also want to mention an issue which I raised during subcommittee consideration of this bill related to an FDA proposal to require certain labeling requirements for prescription drugs--the so-called med-guide rule. Let me digress just a moment to say that--this is a little personal-- I recently had an illness. I went to the drugstore to get four different medications. I have studiously avoided taking aspirin all of my life. I hate medicine. I do not like to take it. But in this case it was required. For the first time in my life, the pharmacist with each of the four prescriptions handed me a rather detailed description of the medicine--what it was designed to do, contraindications to look for, any reactions that you might have. I read it very carefully. It is the first time I had ever gotten anything like that. As it turned out, I was allergic to one of the drugs, which caused me to have a fever, a rash, and I had to quit taking it. But the informational sheet that the pharmacist gave me had pointed out that that very thing might happen. That is good information. It is the information that the pharmaceutical-buying public is entitled to. I understand--and I agree with the concerns of the Food and Drug Administration--that consumers need to be provided with this information. As I pointed out, some pharmacies are already doing it on a voluntary basis. Of course, they are getting their information from the pharmaceutical manufacturers of those drugs. But all pharmacies are not doing this now. In some cases, the information is not totally accurate or complete. So in the full committee, I offered report language that will help relieve some of the concerns that Commissioner Kessler expressed to me about the statutory language contained in this bill. I understand the House has similar language but of a nature more to the liking of the commission. In my report, language is designed to give FDA assurances that the information to be provided to consumers will be appropriately crafted and higher rates of participation by pharmacies will be obtained. Mr. President, that concludes my remarks. Again, I want to congratulate my good friend and colleague, Senator Cochran and his able staff in drafting the bill now before us. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. Does the consent agreement continue on what we will do after those votes and final passage on the welfare bill?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. Has there been a unanimous-consent agreement entered that we would start back-to-back votes on welfare bill amendments in the morning?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, let me make one other observation: According the charts Senator Graham has compiled, I do not know where the Senator got the figure that we will get such a big increase. The truth is we will get $282 million less per capita over the next 6 years simply because we are using the 1991 and 1994 formula.

Mr. BUMPERS. Either Senator Graham or myself.

Mr. BUMPERS. Let me make one other observation, because I know the Senator has labored in the vineyard a long time on welfare. It is one of those issues for which the time never seems right. I said we ought to do it next year. We tried to do it last year, which was not an election year. It did not work out. But I think the Senator, for whom I have the utmost respect--and when I talk about Members of Congress that seem to lack some compassion, I am certainly not talking about my friend from New Mexico. I know he has labored long and hard for this. It is a complex issue. The deeper I got into it on this amendment, the more complex it became. But I will say this--and I think the Senator would agree with me--you cannot make a program like this work, not the way it ought to work, when, for example, a child in Massachusetts or New York or someplace else is worth 10 times as much as a child in Arkansas or Mississippi. We are not ever going to get our act together when we have that much disparity. I am not saying there does not have to be effort, because effort is important. Some of these States have made monumental efforts. But effort is a comparative thing. We have made efforts, too. Compared to some others maybe it was not as great. When the Senator talks about how many poor children there are in New York, I know the Senator is correct when he says there are probably more poor children in New York than there are in Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas put together. But we are talking about poor children as a percentage of the population. We are talking about how many poor children you have compared to all the children in the State or all the people in the State. When you get to that point, New York is not in the running with Arkansas. I want to say to the Senator from New Mexico, I appreciate his comments. As I say, I have the utmost respect for his efforts to get this bill passed and all the effort he has made in the past. I just happen to disagree with him. I yield the floor. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. I wonder if the Senator would yield for a moment? Would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. BUMPERS. Will the Senator repeat that. I am sorry; I did not hear him.

Mr. BUMPERS. Yes.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the Senator from Florida, Senator Graham, offered an amendment on behalf of himself and the Senator from Arkansas Friday afternoon. Unhappily, I was not here and did not get a chance to speak on it. I would like to seize the opportunity now to just make a few remarks. Before doing that, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to yield to the Senator from North Dakota to allow him to lay down an amendment without debate.

Mr. BUMPERS. Medicaid.