Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, of those items that my colleague, Senator Cochran, described as having been reduced, in most cases, they were reduced from a level of funding that we thought was necessary. But I say that, in almost every case, these items have no entry on the underlying amendment. There isn't any money available in the Cochran proposal that the Senate has considered. So it is true, we have had to reduce some accounts. But whatever is left is certainly more than exists in the farm crisis package that has been offered today by my colleague. I hope that our colleagues will look at this in the spirit in which it is offered and believe that a compromise is important and necessary and believe it is far better during a farm crisis to try to extend the helping hand to people who are producing and provide help, because prices have collapsed for that which they have produced, than it is to concoct another approach that says: Let's just send checks out there and hope some of them get in the right mailboxes. That is what AMTA is and what it does. That is why it is not effective. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. How much time remains?

Mr. DORGAN. I yield as much time as the Senator from Iowa consumes.

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, I ask the Senator from Kansas if the amendment has been made available to others of us on the floor. I think the Senator mentioned seven Senators he has worked with, but is the amendment available at this point?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in an attempt to try to find a solution to the issue of providing relief during this farm crisis, I am offering an amendment, in the second degree, on behalf of myself and Senator Harkin and other Members here on the Senate floor. As Members of the Senate will recall, the proposal we offered yesterday was a proposal that called for $10.7 billion in crisis relief. That $10.7 billion has been modified in this second-degree amendment, and is $9.837 billion. We have reduced it nearly $1 billion by making adjustments in a range of accounts. The accounts include emergency short-term land diversion, disaster reserve--a number of different programs that we have adjusted, that we have thought it appropriate to adjust in order to try to find a compromise that would cost less but still provide significant support and help to family farmers. My colleague, Senator Harkin, and I have worked, along with Senator Conrad and Senator Daschle, Senator Johnson of South Dakota, and others, to see if there is some way we can provide for legislation that will offer assistance at a level that is greater than that which now rests with the underlying amendment. I had indicated previously that the amendment offered by Senator Cochran does not deal with disaster issues. There isn't money for disaster issues in that piece of legislation. There isn't money for flooded lands. There are a number of deficiencies in that amendment, and it simply does not reach the level that is necessary to address this farm crisis. So in an attempt to see if we can find some middle ground, in an attempt to offer an amendment that is almost $1 billion less than we had offered previously, by making adjustments in about seven or eight categories, we are trying to see if we can get a favorable vote on this amendment. This amendment, if it should fail, as I understand it, will be followed by one additional amendment. But let me at this moment call on my colleague from Iowa who has joined me in offering this amendment. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will take a couple of minutes, and I think my colleague, perhaps both of my colleagues, would like to add a comment. My hope has been, and still is, that we will have a bipartisan solution to this issue today. This is not such a solution. A number of discussions have taken place with a number of Senators from both sides of the aisle. We face the same crises: collapsed prices in rural America and a drought that is spreading across our country. There is not a Republican or a Democratic way to go broke on the family farm. It is just human misery and tragedy that allows those to lose their hopes and dreams and lose their farms because of economic collapse in Asia or price collapse in the U.S. or the worst crop disease of a century or a wet cycle that means 3 million acres can't be planted in our State this spring. It is not the farmer's fault. So we need to do something. The question is, What do we do? We have had several different plans. This is the third, I guess, that will be voted on in the Senate. It is short on disaster aid, as we know. We know there is a disaster occurring. Turn on the television set and listen to the newscasts. They say it is the worst drought in a century in some parts of this country. We might as well be prepared to face that. We ought to add some of that to this legislation. Second, my colleague, in his presentation of the amendment, talked about dollars going to producers immediately. As we all know, AMTA is going to get dollars to people who aren't producing. That is one of the problems. AMTA is a payment scheme based on 1991 and 1995 production history. They are going to be sending money to the people who aren't producing anything. One other point: My expectation is that this amendment does not change the payment limits. I wonder how many of my colleagues know that the potential, under this approach--and I am able to be corrected, if I am inaccurate--the potential under this approach is to pay $460,000 essentially to a farmer, $460,000 as a new payment limitation. The $80,000 payment limit under current law is doubled. So for AMTA and LDPs, the potential is $460,000 for a producer. Who wants to tell a wage earner in some community someplace that we want you to pay taxes so we can give a little help to family farmers? And by the way, some might get $460,000. What kind of a payment limit is that? How does one describe this as help to family-sized farms? We don't need to help agrifactories in America. We don't need a Department of Agriculture. We don't need a farm program. If our future is in agrifactories, we don't need to construct these kinds of programs or have a Department of Agriculture, for my money. The purpose is to try to protect and help and nurture family farming as an enterprise in this country because it strengthens our country. But $460,000 in payment limits? A potential farmer will get $460,000? What kind of nonsense is this? My expectation is that it is still part of the amendment. My hope is that we will still have an opportunity for a bipartisan solution today. Those of us who come from farm country, in both the Republican and Democratic Parties here, serve the same interests, have the same desire, and have the same passion to try to help family farmers get through this troubled period. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, my hope is that we are able to find a way this afternoon to adequately deal with this question of disaster relief. I know Senator Cochran has just reoffered and now modified the proposal he made previously. We had a tabling vote on that proposal and the tabling vote did not prevail. So we know at least somewhat where the votes are on the Cochran proposal. He has modified it, as I understand, to include $400 million with respect to crop insurance. My hope is that we can move beyond this proposal, which I think is short on what is necessary, to a couple of additional proposals that we may be able to agree to with respect to procedure at least. This proposal that is now before the Senate does not provide assistance for disaster relief. We now see, in every television and radio newscast that we turn to or refer to on the front pages of the papers, the worst drought in this century in some parts of our country. We know disaster relief is going to be necessary because of this drought. We ought to begin to get a start on that in any emergency package we pass dealing with family farmers. There are a number of other things that are left out of the proposal that has just been offered. My hope is that we can, in the next couple of hours, improve this package to the point where most of us believe it does what we believe it should do for family farmers. I want to mention, again, we are not on the floor dealing with an agricultural disaster or agricultural crisis issue because of something farmers have done. It is not their fault the Asian economies have collapsed. It is not the farmers' fault in my State that they have suffered the worst crop disease of the century. It is not their fault we have 3 million acres that couldn't be planted this spring because of wet conditions. Incidentally, that would not be dealt with in the Cochran proposal, flooded lands and so on. This is not the fault of family farmers. We have faced a very serious problem at this point. There is a responsibility for the Congress to help. This is the appropriate place to do that. This is the Agriculture appropriations bill. We have been discussing this now for a number of months. The collapse in the grain and commodities and livestock markets have been spectacular and have been noticed by everyone who cares about the farm economy and family farmers. This is not a surprise to anyone that we are dealing with this question now. While there may be disagreements on the floor of the Senate about exactly how to do it, I think in the end, when we finish this afternoon, we should have been able to pass a piece of legislation dealing with the farm crisis that provides opportunity and hope to family farmers. If we just kick it around a bit and just tune it up a little bit so that it looks better or sounds better or appears better but doesn't provide the kind of help necessary for family farmers, this has all been wasted effort. If we are not able to provide a reasonable safety net and/or during tough times some emergency help that gives family farmers a chance to get from here to there, that gives them a chance to feel that there is some hope for the ability to continue farming, then we haven't accomplished anything at all. The test, then, this afternoon is not whether we pass the proposal before us. That proposal is insufficient. It doesn't meet the needs. The test is whether we can pass one of a couple other proposals that we will, I hope, shortly make in order by consent that will be debated under short time considerations and then will be voted upon. Those of us from farm country understand every day the dichotomy about this economy of ours. We hear about all of the wonderful things in the American economy. Yet in farm country, we see a near total collapse of rural communities, rural counties, and the economies of family farming. We understand this Congress cannot say it doesn't matter. It does matter in this country. I am not going to revisit all the history of the current farm bill, but the philosophy of the current farm bill is that family farmers in this country shall be transitioned out of the farm program. Farm programs shall cease to exist at some point and the transition payments shall allow farmers to get from here to no farm program. The folly of that is to believe that family-sized farms out there by themselves, trying to float in this sea of uncertainty, with all of the potential adverse effects of weather and grain markets and all of the other catastrophes that can befall a family farmer, that they can do this by themselves. When grain markets collapse and grain prices fall to half, that doesn't matter because family farmers can manage that. That is folly. They can't manage that. Family farmers will not make it. They won't make it across this price valley unless Congress extends a helping hand. The helping hand ought to be an investment in this country, an investment in a disaster package that says family farmers matter to this country in many different ways, and we want to try to give them the capability and the hope that they can survive beyond this price catastrophe. I say again, as I close, the current amendment which is before the Senate is deficient in many ways. It falls far short of doing what is necessary in the area of flooded lands, for example, and many other areas. It simply doesn't offer the kind of support we need in rural America to respond to the current disaster and to respond to the current crisis with respect to the collapse of farming commodity prices. Most deficient is the fact that the underlying amendment doesn't address the disaster issue at all that is now enveloping large parts of our country and devastating family farm producers. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues, Senator Craig, Senator Breaux, and others on the floor, in opposing this amendment. I find it interesting; whenever we talk about sugar, we talk about the ``world price,'' which doesn't have any relationship to anything of importance. The people who describe ``world price" are people who go to a sidewalk sale in front of a store and pick up some odds or ends that somebody is trying to sell at 90 percent off list price and then say: Look what I bought this for; this is the price for that product. No, it is not; it is a sidewalk sale. The same is true with sugar. Most sugar is traded country to country by long-term contract. Very little sugar is moved on the open market. That which is represents an overhang and surplus and represents the dump price or the surplus price. Those are the facts. Somehow there is a notion we should be the victims in this country as a group of producers; whatever the lowest common denominator is, we ought to ride the elevator to the bottom with everybody. Calling the price of sugar on the world market the world price is a misnomer. Most sugar is traded by contract, and it is traded in circumstances where at least you get back the cost of production and a decent profit. This price they are talking about, don't be fooled by it. It doesn't mean anything. It is not related to the production of sugar in this country. Now, who is producing sugar? I find it ironic that in the middle of this discussion about the farm crisis, in the middle of the discussion about the plight of families out there struggling to survive, when the Asian economy has collapsed, exports are down, and prices have collapsed, and in my State we have had the worst crop disease in 100 years, and my State had 3 million acres that could not be planted because it was too wet this spring, we are told there is one part of the farm program that ought to be dismantled. At least this is a part of the farm program that works and has historically worked. It doesn't cost Federal money. It doesn't cost the taxpayer anything. It provides stability of sugar prices for the American consumer. It provides some modicum of stability for the producers. Who are the producers? Family farmers. I was in a room with 1,000 of them in Fargo, ND. These are folks who work on that tractor in the winter, get it all ready, and then take all the risk to put the crop in, plant those beets, take the risk of the harvest, and take the risk through their cooperative. These are good people, and they are going through tough times. The last thing in the world we ought to do is pull the rug out from under those people who are producing our beets and cane and decide we should dismantle this program. There is so much in the farm program that doesn't work, and I have been on the floor for days talking about it. Why go to the part of the farm program that has worked historically to help the producer and say, by the way, let's find something that does work and get rid of it? It doesn't make any sense at all. Let me conclude by saying this is about family farmers as far as I am concerned. It is not about the theory of sugar production or a sugar program or a world price. It is about providing stability for consumers, yes but it is about providing stability of income for some families that are trying to make a living on the land in this country. It is not easy for them. This program is helping them without cost to the American taxpayer. This program has helped them without injury or cost to the American consumer. This program is well conceived and well constructed, is contributing something, and is an asset to American family farmers in this country. The last thing in the world we should do, and the last time we ought to do it, would be to get rid of the sugar program at this point in this debate on the farm program. We ought to preserve the sugar program. We ought to fight for it and preserve it because it works. We ought to do that in the context in which we are working today, to help family farmers in other ways as well, with the disaster program, the response to the farm crisis, and perhaps a change in the underlying farm law at some point in the future. But this is narrow. This is an amendment that says let's get rid of the sugar program. I was unaware of this amendment until an hour or so ago. I did not see any organization developing in the Congress or in the Senate to say let's have a discussion about this. This is a program that has worked so well. Then we have an amendment and then debate for an hour. I think that describes the difficulty. Let us support the sugar program. Let us defeat this amendment. It is important for family farmers in this country to do so. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk, an amendment in the second degree, and ask for its immediate consideration. I offer this amendment on behalf of myself, Senators Harkin, Daschle, Kerrey, Johnson, Conrad, Baucus, Durbin, Wellstone, Lincoln and Sarbanes.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator can emphasize disaster relief. As the Senator indicated--and I knew this--the previous initiative we voted on by the majority party, and was not tabled, that did not include disaster relief. We know disaster is occurring. Drought is spreading across the country. Disaster relief is necessary. Is it the case that the proposal we just voted on had no disaster relief and the proposal we will vote on at 5 o'clock, which you and I and so many others helped draft, does include disaster relief; is that not a significant difference?

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. The payment mechanism is called an AMTA payment or a transition payment. This would actually enhance the transition payment. The purpose of a transition payment, by its very name, is to transition family farmers out of a farm program. It said: Whatever your little boat is, let it float on whatever marketplace exists out there. The problem is, they declare it a free market when in fact it is a market that is totally stacked against family farmers. So family farmers cannot make it in this kind of system. This farm bill that provides transition payments is a faulty concept. Yet even for disaster relief, they cling to this same faulty concept of moving some income out largely because, I think, they are worried, if they do not cling to that, somehow they will be seen as retreating from the farm bill. I would say: Retreat as fast as you can from a farm bill that has put us in this position on wheat prices. You may think it is totally unfair to say wheat prices have anything to do with the farm bill. I don't know. Maybe this is pure coincidence. Maybe it is just some sort of a cruel irony that we passed a new farm bill and all these prices collapsed. But the point is, I was hearing this morning discussions from people who were standing up to say things are really good on the family farm. I did not look closely at their shoes to see whether they had been on a family farm recently. They looked as if they were wearing pretty good pants and shirts and so on. It occurred to me, if things are so good on the family farm, why are we seeing all these farm auctions and all this misery and all this pain and agony with family farmers losing their lifetime of investment? Why? Because prices have collapsed. Things are not good on the family farm. The current farm bill doesn't work. People stand here--I guess I can listen to them--they stand here for hours and tell us how wonderful things are and how much income the current farm bill is spreading in rural America. I would say, however much income that is, it does not make up for the radical, total collapse of the grain markets. What has happened is, we have a payment system that says, under Freedom to Farm, when prices are high, you get a payment that you do not need, and when prices are low, you don't get a payment that is sufficient to give you the help you need.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have waited some while to be able to speak on these disaster bills and on this general issue. I am very pleased to have the opportunity for my colleague from New York who asked if I would yield for a minute for a question. I am happy to do that.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from New York is correct. That is one of the distinctions between these two pieces of legislation. As the drought spreads across the eastern seaboard and other parts of the country and begins to devastate producers there, there needs to be some disaster relief. We have two pieces of legislation proposed today, one of which has no disaster relief at all, even in the face of this increasingly difficult drought. So the Senator from New York, speaking on behalf of producers who are hard-hit in New York, is certainly accurate to say that the amendment we have offered provides drought relief and the alternative does not.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is not about Republicans and Democrats. I start by saying to my colleague from Iowa that I hope, whatever comes from all of this debate, at the end of the time we can, as Republicans and Democrats, find a way to provide appropriate relief to people who are hurting. There is not a Republican or a Democratic way to go broke on the family farm. The destruction of hopes and dreams on the family farm is something that is tragic and something to which we need to respond. This is not of the family farmers' making. They didn't cause prices to collapse or the Asian economies to have difficulty, and they didn't cause a wet cycle or crop disease. It is not their fault. We must, it seems to me, respond to it. But it is appropriate, I think, for there to be differences in the way we respond. There is a philosophical difference in the way we respond. Also, there has been a difference in the aggressiveness and interest in responding. I know that if this kind of economic trouble were occurring on Wall Street or in the area of corporate profits, we would have a legislative ambulance, with its siren, going full speed in trying to find a solution. It has not been quite so easy because it is family farmers. Darrel Sudzback is an auctioneer from Minot, ND. Blake Nicholson, an Associated Press writer, wrote a piece the other day. He said: Darrel Sudzback likens farm sales to funerals. He said, ``If you don't know the deceased, you are not likely to get emotional.'' But more often than not these days, auctioneers must help a friend or a neighbor sell off a lifetime of hard work. Marvin Hoffman says, ``It just hurts me to do this. When they hurt, I hurt.'' With many families [Mr. Nicholson writes] sliding deeper into an economic nightmare, the number of farm sales in North Dakota continues to rise. ``It used to be,'' one auctioneer said, ``that a farm auction was kind of like a social event, a joyful event when somebody was retiring.'' Julian Hagen said that he conducted auction sales for 43 years, but he said, ``Now there is a different atmosphere at auction sales. If people know that a man is forced out, that is not a good feeling. It is tough to deal with when you have known a family farmer for quite a few years, and now they have to give up a career or property they have had in the family for generations. I try to stay as upbeat as I can. Bankers in north-central North Dakota say that area has been hit by 5 years of flooding and crop disease, and many farmers have been forced off the land. People need to think of this problem in terms of not only lost income, but assume you are on a farm and you have a tractor; you have some land; you have a family; you have hopes and dreams. You put a crop in the ground and see that this is what has happened to your income--to your price. Then on top of that, add not only collapsed prices, but add the worst crop disease in this century--the worst in a century in North Dakota. On top of that, add a wet spring so that 3.2 million acres--yes, I said 3.2 million acres--of land could not be planted. It was left idle. Add all of those things together, and you have a catastrophe for families out there struggling to make a living. Will Rogers was always trying to be funny. He used to talk about the difference between Republicans and Democrats. He said on April 6, 1930, ``Even the Lord couldn't stand to wait on the Republicans forever.'' He was talking about the farm program. There is a difference, it seems to me. There is a difference between Republicans and Democrats in how we construct a solution to the disaster and the crisis, and how we feel the underlying farm bill should be changed. Will Rogers also said, ``If farmers could harvest the political promises made to them, they would be sitting pretty.'' I want to talk a bit about those political promises--the political promises given farmers early on to say that we want to get rid of the farm program as we know it in this country, get rid of the safety net as we know it, and create something called ``transition payments'' under the Freedom to Farm bill. I mentioned yesterday that the title was interesting to me. Sometimes titles can change how people perceive things notwithstanding what might be the real part of a proposal. Early on when people began to sell insurance in this country, they called it death insurance. You know, death insurance didn't sell too well. So they decided that they had better rename it. So they renamed it life insurance, and it started selling. It was a better name. It is a product that most Americans need and use. It is interesting. What is in a name. The name for the farm bill a few years ago was Freedom to Farm. We passed a Freedom to Farm bill. The wheat price slump on this chart may be unconnected, or maybe not to Freedom to Farm. Here are the wheat prices before--Freedom to Farm--and wheat prices since. Chance? Happenstance? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we face a circumstance in this country where the underlying farm bill was never designed to work and allowed for collapsed prices. Maybe that is the fact. I want to begin with a bit of history. About 40 years ago, a biologist by the name of Rachel Carson wrote a book that in many ways changed our country. It was called ``The Silent Spring.'' The book documented how the products of America's industrial production were seeping into our country's food chain. The modern environmental movement was also from Rachel Carson's book, ``The Silent Spring.'' Today we face another ``silent spring'' in this country. Like the first, it is of a human making. But it is not about birds, and it is not about fish. It involves our country's independent family farmers and producers. It involves our social habitat--the farm communities of which family farmers are the base. We know that family farmers are hurting. In fact, many would consider it an extraordinary year if they had any opportunity at all to meet their cost of production. I know of cases that break my heart--people who have fought for decades, and now are losing everything they have. What is worse is that some opinion leaders are starting to throw in the towel. They say, well, maybe family farming is a relic of the past. Maybe it is not of value to our country anymore. Maybe it is time to do something else. I don't buy that at all. I think one thing we can say about the future is that people will be eating. The world's population is growing rapidly. Every month in this world we add another New York City in population. Every single month, another New York City in population is added to our globe. We know there is no more farmland being created on this Earth. It doesn't take a genius to put those two together.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. I thank the Senator from Maryland. He is talking about a drought which is devastating part of our country even as collapsed prices have been devastating wheat farmers and the grain farmers in my part of the country. I want to respond to some things that were said earlier today that somehow we are not as efficient as we need to be as family farmers. In my judgment--and I think the evidence supports this--the family farmer in our country is as productive as any in the world. It supports our rural communities in ways that corporations never will and never can. Family farmers have faced hard times before. This is not something new. The history of farming is a history of difficulty. But never before has the Federal Government done so little to help and so much to push the producer off the edge. On top of the floods that we have talked about and the drought and the slump in the foreign markets, our farmers are facing a plague of deliberate public policies--yes, established here in Washington--that undermine their economic interest. They face trade agreements designed for the convenience of food processors rather than food producers. They face a ``see-no-evil'' posture toward antitrust enforcement that has left family farmers selling into controlled markets that dictate the terms to them. On top of that, they face a 1996 farm bill that fundamentally doesn't and can't work. There is a larger issue than dollars and cents; namely, the kind of country we are going to be. It is not fashionable to raise all of these issues. We are supposed to keep our mouths shut and cash in on the stock market which has done quite well. But the Founding Fathers didn't create this country primarily to be an engine of stock market riches or rising gross domestic product. They created this country to promote a way of life based on freedom and democracy and independent producers in contrast to the aristocracy they left behind in Europe. The concept of independence and freedom was rooted in the land, and they couldn't conceive of these things being separate. Wendell Berry, a farmer, testified recently in Washington at a hearing that I chaired. He said: Thomas Jefferson thought the small land owners were the most precious part of state, and he thought government should give priority to their survival. But increasingly, since World War II our government's manifest policy has been to get rid of them. This country is paying a price for this. That price doesn't show up on the supermarket shelves but rather our Nation's spirit and our character. Independent family-based agriculture produces more than wheat, beef, and pork. It produces a society and a culture, our main streets, our equipment dealers, our schools, our churches, and our hospitals. It is the ``culture'' in agriculture. Take away family-based producers and all that is left are calories. That is a radical change in our country. I am not talking about rural sentimentalism or nostalgia. It is something we know from experience. Rural communities work. They have so many of the things the Americans all over this country say they want, including stable families, low crime rates, neighborliness, a volunteer spirit. In my hometown of Regent, ND, they still leave the keys in the car when they park on Main Street. Try doing that here. Many Americans have plenty of food on their tables, but what they feel is a growing dearth of the qualities that they want most are the qualities that farm communities represent. It would be insane, in my judgment, to stand by and let these communities wither on the vine by neglecting the economic base that sustains them. Yes, the Nation's financial establishment is enthused about that prospect. It can't wait to turn hog barns into agrifactories and more. However, that will not advance this country's interests. We can't stop bad weather and we can't stop unruly markets, but we can change Federal policies that turn adversity into quicksand for family farmers. I listened to a ringing defense of the current farm program. I listened to one of my colleagues who was an economist, and I mentioned before I used to teach economics but was able to overcome that and go on to think clearly. There is an interesting debate among economists about all of these issues. First, is there a crisis? Listening to part of the debate this morning one would think there is nothing wrong on the family farm. Is there a crisis? Would anyone in this country be feeling there is a crisis if this is what happened to their income? If any sector of the American economy had this happen to their income, would they consider it a crisis? The answer is, of course. I had a farmer come to a meeting who farmed the lands that his granddad farmed, his dad farmed, and he farmed. He stood up and said: For 23 years, I farmed this land. His chin began to quiver and his eyes began to water. He could hardly speak. He said: I'm going to have to leave this farm. Anyone could tell he loved what he did. He was going to lose the farm that his granddad, dad, and he had farmed for those many decades. Is that a crisis? I think so. In my State, add to the fact that incomes have collapsed because of price collapses, 3.2 million acres were not planted because of wet conditions in the spring--3.2 million acres. A young boy wrote some while ago and said: My dad could feed 180 people and he can't feed his family. Is that a crisis? Of course. Why the crisis? I mentioned collapsed prices and a wet spring and the worst crop disease in the century in our part of the country. This notion of a farm bill that says the free market shall determine what happens in agriculture, by cutting the tether and turning it all loose, finds you scratching your head and wondering, gee, why didn't this work out the way we thought? Because the market isn't free. It never has been free and never will be free. That bill that says we will transition farmers out of any help, over 7 years that bill transitions farmers into a marketplace that is fixed. Does anybody know what kind of tariff we have putting beef into Japan at this moment? I guess it costs $30 or $35 a pound to buy T-bone steak in Tokyo. Does anybody know what tariff exists on beef going into Japan? Very close to 50 percent. That is a failed free market by any definition anywhere. That is after we reached an agreement with them 10 years ago. How about China? They consume half the world's pork. Are we delivering a lot of hogs into China? No, we have a $50 billion to $60 billion trade deficit with China and we are not exporting enough hogs into China. What about wheat in Canada? No. I drove to the border of Canada with a truck and couldn't get the wheat into Canada. I stopped at the border, and all the way to the border, semitruckload after semitruckload after semitruckload was coming into this country, hauling Canadian grain into our country and undercutting our farmer's prices. We sit at the border trying to go north, you can't. The border coming south is flooded by millions of wheat acres, unfairly subsidized, sold to us by a Canadian wheat board. It is a state monopoly and would be illegal in this country, with it's secret prices. Our trade officials downtown wouldn't lift a finger--never have and never will--to deal with the unfair trade practices. I mention Japan, China, and Canada. I could list other countries for an hour, but I won't. Then we say to the family farmers, operate in a free marketplace. That is what we have created, a marketplace that is fundamentally corrupt with respect to fairness to our family farmers. My colleague this morning, Senator Conrad, talked about the Europeans subsidizing exports to the tune of ten times our subsidies. Is that fair competition? I don't think so. Over and over and over, if it is not just unfair competition in selling, selling into our marketplace with products that ought not be allowed, produced with growth hormones or produced with chemicals that we wouldn't allow to be used in this country on animals or grains--that happens every day in every way. We produce canola in this country and we are prevented from using a chemical on the canola that we would purchase from Canada because that chemical can't be allowed into the country. However, the Canadians can use that chemical on their canola, plant the canola, harvest it, and ship it into Belfield, ND, to put it at a crushing plant, crush it, and put it into our food chain. My farmers say: Why is that the case? What is going on here? What is going on here is family farmers have been set up in every single way, set up for failure. I heard this morning what was being proposed here was socialism. I heard what was being proposed here was being proposed by a bunch of leftists. I heard what was being proposed here was being proposed by people who don't believe in the principles of economics. I sat here and thought, that is novel; an interesting, pithy new political debate calling people socialists or leftists. Or maybe it isn't so new. Maybe it is just a tired, rheumatoid, calcified debate by people who can't think of anything else to say. Deciding to stand up and help family farmers in a time of crisis and trouble is socialistic? Are you kidding me? It is everything that is right about the instincts of this country. When part of this country is in trouble, the rest of the country moves to help. I wasn't there, but in the old wagon train days when we populated the western part of this country with wagon trains, one of the first lessons learned was don't move ahead by leaving somebody behind. That is an indelible lesson. The same is true with this country and its economy. Don't move ahead by leaving some behind. When family farmers are in trouble, we have a responsibility to help, not crow about socialism and leftists. What a bunch of nonsense. The fact is, the same kind of debate includes this: We are no longer the most efficient in farming. I heard that this morning. We are no longer the most efficient in farming. Nonsense. Show me who is better. Tell me who is better. I am sick and tired of this ``blame America first'' notion. We lose because we are no longer the most efficient. Tell me who is more efficient anywhere else in the world. Stop blaming this country first for everything. If we had a free market, if we had open markets, if we had fair competition, if we didn't have policymakers setting up family farmers for failure, and if they paid as much attention to the family economic unit--which apparently has no value to a lot of folks in this country-- as we do for the corporate economic unit, maybe we would see some policies that would say to family farmers, you matter in this country's future and we want to keep you. I do not understand much of this debate, except we face the requirement to do two things, and we need to do them soon. First, we must respond to a farm crisis. That is the purpose of the two bills on the floor of the Senate today. We do it in very different ways. As my colleague from New York mentioned, the majority party bill doesn't even respond to any part of the disaster; there are no disaster provisions at all. Of course, we have a substantial part of this country now facing a serious drought, so it is a very serious problem. We have very different ways in which we provide income support to family farmers. The majority party follows the Freedom to Farm bill, which of course is a total flop, total failure. It gives payments to people who are not producing. It says: You are not producing; you are not in trouble; you don't have any crop; here's some money. What kind of logic is that? It doesn't make any sense. We propose a mechanism by which we provide help to people who are producing and are losing money as a result of that production, trying to provide help to shore up that family farm. Our position is simple. When prices hit a valley, we want a bridge across that valley so family farmers can get across that valley. We want to build a bridge, and other people want to blow up the bridge. But if we don't take the first step to provide some crisis and disaster relief and then follow it very quickly in September and October, as I discussed with my colleague from Iowa and others, with a change in the underlying farm bill, we will not have done much for farmers. Farmers say to me: We very much appreciate some disaster help, but it will not provide the hope that is necessary for me to plant a crop and believe that I can make it. We need a change in the farm bill. We need a safety net that we think has a chance to work for us in the future.

Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Let me ask the Senator to yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. I say to the Senator from West Virginia, I sought an answer to that question some while ago. I have been on the floor an hour. I stepped off the floor for a moment. I believe the Senator from Mississippi indicated the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, perhaps wanted to speak next. In any event, I think perhaps it would be helpful if we established some order, and I am willing to accept whatever order the managers wish to establish. If I am not able to speak now or soon, I will ask consent to be recognized at 2:15 to speak.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, because of another engagement, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to speak at 2:15 when the Senate reconvenes.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, but if we are going to establish an order, and if there is an appropriate back and forth, I ask that I follow Senator Wellstone on this side of the aisle.