Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from South Dakota, Senator Johnson, states it exactly as it is. I have said before, this particular amendment gives modesty an understated reputation, in my judgment. It is too modest for my taste. I certainly am going to support it. I certainly will support it because it does increase the loan rate, albeit to a level that is far too low. It does increase the loan rate some. It does extend the time in which a farmer can use that marketing loan to better market their grain; and certainly we ought to do that. If we say, as a consistent philosophy, farmers should go to the marketplace for their price, then you must give farmers the time to access the marketplace when the price might be better than it is just after harvest. Normally, just after harvest they truck that grain to the elevator and--guess what--they find prices that are not very high. It would be better for them to hold it and wait until it is in their advantage to market it. The Senator from South Dakota describes it as it exactly is. This does not, in any way, unravel the tenets of the current farm program. Would I like to unravel it? You bet your life I would. I do not support it. I never did. I think it is a terrible farm program. Does the planning flexibility make sense? Yes, it does. I support that fully. But the notion that somehow we ought to decide that in every other area we will provide some basic support because that area has merit and worth and value, but in family farming we will pull the support out because somehow that is of lesser value to this country--as I said earlier, this is a lot more than dollars and cents. That is what the farm bill debate missed a couple of years ago. The specific amendment which I intend to vote for but which is so incredibly modest--it really ought to be replaced by an amendment that says for a certain amount of production, 20,000 bushels of wheat, for example, we will provide a $3.75 or $4 loan rate, marketing loan rate-- not the kind of loan where the Federal Government takes control of the grain but, in effect, it becomes a marketing loan where we pay the difference between what the farmer gets on the open market and what the support price is. That is what we ought to be doing. But this amendment is certainly worth supporting because, as the Senator says, it does not fray, undermine or unravel the tenets of the current farm program.

Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to respond.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the thoughts expressed by the Senator from Minnesota. I want to follow on, just briefly, on the question of trade. It relates to this entire issue of how farmers are doing, because farmers are told by some: You go ahead and compete in the free marketplace. We will set you loose. Go ahead and compete in the free market. Then farmers discover there is no free market. When they market up, the large grain trade firms have their fists around the neck of the body of a few firms that control all that. Four firms control most of the flour milling; four firms control most of the meat packing--you name it. I have shown the list out here. In every area where farmers market, there are four firms that control the majority of the processing. With respect to trade--the Senator from Minnesota mentioned trade-- farmers are told: You compete in the free market system. Let me tell you just about the United States-Canadian situation. The vote on the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement, when I was in the House of Representatives and on the Ways and Means Committee, was 34 to 1; 34 to 1. Guess who the ``1 '' was. Yes, that's me. It probably says one of a couple of things. It probably says I have no influence at all with the other 34 members. It may say that. They said to me, ``You are going to be the only one who votes against this. Gee, this must be a unanimous vote. We must have your vote. Everybody else in this committee is going to vote for this.'' I said, ``This is a terrible piece of legislation for this country. You are selling out American farmers with this trade agreement, and you know it. And I wouldn't vote for this in 100 years.'' And I didn't. Let me tell you what has happened. We have a woman from North Dakota who marries a Canadian, and they go back to southwestern North Dakota for Thanksgiving. She decides, ``I am going to take some of that good hard red spring wheat that they produce in North Dakota--we produce in North Dakota, back to Canada, because I am going to crush it a little bit back there and bake some whole wheat bread.'' She loves to bake bread. So they go back to Canada after their Thanksgiving break. She has a couple of grocery bags full of hard red spring wheat from North Dakota, so that when she gets back home she can bake a little bread. She gets to the Canadian border and she is told, ``Oh, we are sorry, you can't take that wheat into Canada. You can't take a couple of grocery sacks full of wheat into Canada.'' All the way to the border she meets semi- truckload after semi-truckload after semi-truckload of Canadian wheat coming south. Or a man with a pickup truck, and just kernels of wheat in the back, is told you must sweep out the back of the pickup truck before you can enter Canada with kernels of wheat. So he sweeps the pickup truck box out. All the time he is sweeping, Canadian 18-wheel semi-truckloads of wheat are coming into this country. In fact, we even had an agreement with Canada at one point to provide some sort of reasonable limit, and they exceeded the limit last year by 25,000 semi-truckloads--25,000 semi-truckloads. I went up to the border--I told my colleagues this many times before--with Earl Jensen, and we had a 10-year-old, orange, 2-ton truck with a few bushels of wheat on it. We almost had to use our windshield wipers to wipe away the grain splattering against our windshield on a windy day from Canadian 18-wheelers hauling all that flood of Canadian grain into our country. Guess what? When Earl and I pulled up to the border, we were told, ``We're sorry, you can't get that American grain into Canada.'' Free trade? Who negotiated that kind of soft-headed, weak-kneed trade agreement do we have that refuse to stand up for this country's interest, that say to other countries, ``Yeah, you can close your borders to us and we will open our borders to you, and we will call it fair, and we will call it square''--what kind of a deal is that? In this town, everybody talks about free trade, never wanting to talk about the details. The fact is, every one of our farmers in North Dakota and every one of the farmers in Minnesota, represented by Senator Wellstone, confront that problem every day, and it is unfair. That grain comes flooding across our border, I am convinced unfairly subsidized, and we sent the Government Accounting Office up to the Canadian Wheat Board to audit their books and records, because we think they are dumping illegally in this country. Guess what they said? ``We are sorry, we have no intention of opening our books and records to you; scram, get out of here.'' So here we are. Prices collapsed because of unfair trade and, yes, Canada is a major part of that. Prices collapsed for a dozen other reasons. Rampant crop disease devastates the quality of the crop, and then we have farm families who for 30 years have been turning that yard light off and on every morning as they get up to do chores, gas their tractor, go out and plant their seeds and hope they can raise a crop. And now they are told, ``Well, gee, we are sorry; we have free trade and a free market and if you can't make it in either, tough luck.'' The plain fact is, there is no free trade and there is no free market, and anybody who thinks about the details and the specifics knows it. We owe it to the farmers of this country in a range of areas, whether it is international trade or price supports or other areas to say we want to stand for the interest of family farmers. Let me also say the Freedom to Farm bill was a bill that had a couple of propositions, one of which makes eminent good sense, and I support it, and that is, farmers ought to be able to choose to plant what they want to plant when they want to plant it. That makes sense to me, and I support that. But the other is to say we will now essentially withdraw price supports and tell farmers you operate in the free market, despite the fact the free market doesn't exist. That doesn't make any sense. If ever an example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater is appropriate, it is here. We didn't need, in order to give farmers planning flexibility, to decide that price supports don't matter. Eighteen years ago, the target price for wheat was $4.38 a bushel, and the loan rate was $3.65 a bushel. In every other area, prices have gone up for input costs; in every other area dealing with other earners, minimum wages have been increased some. But the compensation for farmers has been substantially diminished in terms of support prices. It is as if to say the economic all-stars in this country don't matter. They work hard, they produce well, they produce the best quality food for the lowest percent of disposable income anywhere on the face of the Earth, and they are told, ``By the way, the value of what you produce does not have worth.'' I said yesterday, and I say it again, because at least to me personally it is so perplexing and seems so Byzantine, this morning, as I speak, halfway around the globe, we are told there are old women climbing trees in Sudan to forage for leaves to eat because they are near starvation. A million, a million and a quarter people are on the abyss of starvation. And then halfway around the globe, again, we are told those family farmers, who raise food in such abundant quantity and such good food, that what they produce doesn't have value and doesn't have worth. The marketplace says to them--whatever this marketplace is--choked down on the top, choked from the bottom, choked on the sides by unfair trade by monopolies from railroads, to grain processors, to millers, you name it; they are telling the farmer in this distorted marketplace that what you produce doesn't have value. It costs you 5 bucks per bushel to produce; we will give you $3 for it. Want to lose $2 a bushel? That is fine. Lose your heritage, lose what your dad produced, lose what your grandad produced. And you go to these meetings and you find these folks who stand up at a meeting, as they have for me, and one sticks out in my mind--I have had many of them in recent weeks--a big, burly, husky kind of guy with a beard and with friendly eyes who said, ``You know, I have been a farmer all my life. I love farming. My grandad farmed. My dad farmed, and I have farmed for 23 years.'' He got tears in his eyes and his chin began to quiver as he said, ``But I have to quit. I can't make it. I can't raise grain at $5 a bushel or $4.50 a bushel and sell it at $3.50 a bushel and my lender says I can't get enough money to put in the next crop.'' When you see people like that begin to tear up and talk about what family farming means to them, then you understand this is not dollars and cents, this is not just some macroeconomic theory, this is something much more in this country. Family farming has always meant much more than just dollars and cents. Thomas Jefferson described it, as I said yesterday, as the most important enterprise in America. His words were more eloquent than that, but that is what he said. What he meant was these people who dot the landscape in America, the broad-based economic ownership that comes with family farming contributes immensely to our country. I have said before, it contributes to the family values of our country. Family values have always originated on family farms and rolled through to our small towns, nourishing our small towns and our big cities. There is much more here than just dollars and cents. I hope that as we begin these discussions we can remember this. At least the first amendment that we adopted yesterday says, yes, this Congress recognizes there is a crisis. In my State, family farmers have seen a 98-percent decrease in net income. Name anybody living anywhere, except the wealthiest among us, who could, at the end of a period where they have lost 98 percent of their income, stand and say, ``Well, I am doing just fine.'' Most everybody on every block in every community in every facet of life would be flat on their back losing 98 percent of their income, and we know that. It is not different for family farmers. They are now flat on their backs facing collapsed prices, rampant crop disease and fundamentally unfair trade in every direction, markets that are captured and cornered and collapsed by a few companies, a few companies that control those markets. It is one thing to say to farmers, ``It is a free market and free trade, and God bless you, and what happens.'' That is not, in my judgment, what this country ought to offer family farmers in terms of domestic policy. (Mr. BURNS assumed the Chair.)

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator from Minnesota remembers a couple of years ago this Congress--or a Congress passed a new farm bill, one that I voted against and one he voted against. Do you remember, following the passage of the new farm bill, some of the large corporate agricultural interests were celebrating? They said, ``We won.'' The big corporate agricultural interests said they won. So they were having a big celebration. It is not surprising, then, back when they were trying to push this kind of farm bill through, that those of us who voted against this farm bill said, ``You are pulling the safety net out from under family farmers.'' You have minimum wages for folks who work at the bottom of the economic scale in town. What they were trying to do 2 years ago, with the farm bill, is the same as saying to the minimum wage earners: Let's cut the minimum wage to a buck an hour and call it ``freedom to work.'' It would be the same thing on minimum wage: Let's cut it to a dollar an hour and call it ``freedom to work.'' What they said to farmers was: Let's pull your safety net out from under you and call it Freedom to Farm. What a bunch of baloney. Then prices collapsed, we have crop disease, we have disaster, we have family farmers going broke in record numbers, so many that we don't have enough auctioneers to handle the sales in North Dakota, and now we are back here a couple of years later and folks say, ``Gee, the farm bill is working just fine.'' It is not working just fine. This is not an accident. We don't have price supports that are sufficient. I would say the amendment before us, offered by the minority leader, is the most modest of amendments. We ought to go, at a minimum, to $3.75 or $4 on a marketing loan, triggered to the first 20,000 bushels of wheat produced, so that you target some reasonable support to family farms and say, with that, that family farms matter, they have merit and worth and value in our society. Does the Senator recall, a couple of years ago, the celebration by the corporate interests in agriculture over the passage of that farm bill?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of the Senator from Iowa and the Senators from South Dakota and Minnesota who were here. We have offered a sense-of-the-Senate resolution on the question of the farm crisis and will get a vote on that at some point. The Senator from Iowa indicated other amendments will be offered. Let me just provide a bit more context for some of this. I know a lot of folks in this country don't live on a farm, have never been on a farm, and don't know much about family farming. Perhaps they wonder why is there so much discussion about family farming. Why does it matter? I come from a small community of 300 people in southwestern North Dakota, which is where we raise a lot of wheat and livestock. I suppose one can look at those parts of the country where there are not many people who live in the area and say that is not a big population center and it doesn't matter much. But it is where we produce our food, by and large, in this country. When you get on an airplane and fly across the States at night, you look out the window. I am sure as the Senator from Iowa flies across the State of Iowa, just as I fly across North Dakota, he sees these yard lights out there at night. Take a look at them. See these brilliant little lights from the prairie that sparkle up to your airplane window and understand what is there. Underneath that light is a family out there. They have turned the yard light on, on the family farm. That is where they are trying to make a living. All those yard lights out there on the family farms represent the economic blood vessels that represent the rural lifestyle that allow these small towns to flourish and to live. That is where I grew up. I am a Jeffersonian Democrat. I believe, as Thomas Jefferson did, that this country will survive as a free country with the kind of political freedoms that our Constitution guarantees us so long as we also have economic freedom. Economic freedom and political freedom go hand in hand. And economic freedom is nurtured and guaranteed by broad- based economic ownership in our country. Jefferson believed in broad-based economic ownership. Small businesses and family farms dotting the prairies and populating our main streets represent broad-based economic ownership and, ultimately, represent the opportunity within economic freedom. The country these days has seen an orgy of mergers. Gee, every day you wake up and you pick up the morning paper and somebody else has merged. You see it in almost every industry. Recently, it has been banks. The biggest banks in the country discover they love each other, apparently, and decide they want to get married. We didn't even know they were dating, and all of a sudden the newspaper in the morning tells us they want to get hitched, so they merge and two big banks make a much bigger bank. Airlines have been doing it as well. Big airlines take a look at the little airlines and they don't like the competition. They say, ``We want to buy you up and merge.'' So they merge. Two big airlines decide they will be better off if they merge, and they merge. It doesn't matter what industry you look at. We used to have 30 or 40 class 1 railroads in this country. Now we have a handful at best. They all merged. Some say that would also be good for farming. Let's have them all merge together; we can have farmland farmed; just get the family out of there. That is what some say. They say we can have giant corporate agrifactories producing agricultural products from California to Maine and that we don't need family farmers living out on the farms. First of all, I think the people who ignore the question of size and mergers in this country do so at their own peril. And I think the people who ignore the question of the health of family farms do so at their own peril as well. Broad-based economic ownership in this country is important, and we ought to be concerned about it. We especially ought to be concerned about it on the family farm. In addition to hearing about mergers every morning, you turn on the radio going to work and you hear reports on America's economic health. It is always some gray-suited economist who comes from the same university and works for the same entities, in most cases, who tells us how healthy America is, and they tell us in the morning how healthy America is by their latest reports on what we consume. I actually used to teach economics a couple of years. I don't always admit that. Yet, I have been able to overcome that experience and, nonetheless, go on to lead a decent life. When I taught economics, I was one of those who didn't teach that our economic health in America is dependent on what we consume. No, it is dependent on what we produce. Real economic wealth is represented by what you produce. The most prodigious producers in our country are family farmers. They are the all-star producers, bar none. Yet, you can take a look at this economy of ours and who is doing well and who isn't. Then you will discover that this economy has decided, for a whole series of reasons, some of which are public policy reasons and others, that the producers on the family farm are somehow expendable; it doesn't matter whether they do well. I mentioned some while ago that in North Dakota family farmers lost 98 percent of their income in 1 year. I don't know of anyone who can withstand the loss of 98 percent of their income, not in theory, not in practice. When you lose 98 percent of your income, you lose your ability to continue. I am going to read just a few letters from some North Dakotans, because they say it much better than I can. A woman named Shirley in North Dakota. Their son is a beginning farmer. Shirley and her husband farm. Their son is a beginning farmer. She said: My son filled a sprayer with water, then checked the temperature at 4:30 a.m. this morning, June 3, 1998. Last night, freezing temperature records were forecast for all of North Dakota. They ran into a cold spell. She said: My son filled a sprayer with water, then checked the temperature at 4:30 a.m. because it freezes usually just before sunrise. He was prepared to go out and spray the beans with water to prevent them from being killed by frost. He probably already put in a 15- to 18-hour day, but at 4:30 a.m., he was up filling the sprayer with water to try to save his crop. He does carpentry work all winter to make ends meet. He serves on cooperative boards. He is a volunteer on the emergency medical team that runs two rural ambulances in our community. Last year, two quarter sections of his land were totaled by hail, and Federal crop paid almost nothing. He's been able to pay his $5,294-a-year health insurance bill only by giving up some farm-related necessities, like hail insurance. She said: This letter is my personal plea that Congress appreciate the value of family farmers in this country and do something to help stabilize their income. This is from Edwin from North Dakota. He said: If things continue as they are now, in 10 to 15 years, you'll find very few family farms. I believe when and if this happens and the farms get big enough, the price of food will go up drastically because the companies that operate these corporate farms will then be able to hold back production until they get what they want to make a profit. I farm a 1,200-acre farm. The original farm was homesteaded by my grandad, so I'm the third generation to be out here on the family farm. I'm 61 years old and have a son who would very much like to take over the farm when I retire, and I would like nothing better. But I have no choice but to tell him that as it is now, it is almost impossible to make a living on this farm anymore. The Federal Government says they want to keep family farms viable, but the freedom to farm bill is selling them down the river, in my opinion. Mr. President, a letter from a man named Kelly, a family farmer. He wrote to Secretary Glickman and sent me a copy of it. He said: You can say that a farm crisis is occurring in a small isolated area and that Mother Nature has caused all of this, but I disagree. First of all, this is not an isolated area. This is a huge area. The population is small because many farms have already been forced out of business. Mother Nature is something farmers are used to dealing with when they have the proper tools to manage the climate wrath that she can behold. But these tools have slowly been taken away from farmers as yield guarantees and crop insurance formulas are getting lower and lower each time a claim is filed. Secondly, farmers' marketing tools--export enhancement and restricted trade with Canada--have been thrown in the junk pile by two successive administrations. I am not going to continue to read more letters, but I think everyone understands the circumstances. Let me mention, finally, a paragraph from a woman named Kristen who talks about her father: I spoke to my father and he said if he doesn't have a good year this year, doesn't make it this year, he probably will have to get another job and sell the farm. She said: That broke my heart. My father worked so hard all his life to give me and my brother the best upbringing and education. He put me through undergraduate and graduate school. As a child, I remember not seeing him much from April until he started taking me to basketball practice in August. He got up before dawn and returned long after I went to bed. That is what family farming is. The winters were not idle, either. Intricate planning necessary to run a successful farm is done all year-round. The reason my father is struggling is not because he is not a good farmer. He doesn't spend money frivolously. There is an increase in disease ravaging his crops, and the government is cutting back the help to make up for these losses. Well, Mr. President, you get the point. But the point is more than just that. There is suffering and there is a farm crisis. The point is that somehow this system of ours has decided that everybody else can make money with the farmer's product. Yet the persons who grow it, it is OK if they do not make any money, and it is OK if they go broke. You raise some crops, as I mentioned a bit ago, on the farm, and ship them through the process. The people who are going to haul that crop are going to make money. We have a railroad through our State that is going to charge them twice as much to haul that grain per carload of wheat, than they would charge on another line where there is competition. From Bismarck to Minneapolis there is no competition, so a farmer is told, ``You pay $2,300 a carload to ship your wheat to Minneapolis.'' Yet, if you put the wheat on a train from Minneapolis to Chicago, which is about the same distance, you pay $1,000. Why do they charge us more than double? Because they can. That is the way the system works. The people who haul the wheat make money. The people who mill the wheat, the flour mills, are doing just fine. About four firms control about 60 percent of that. They are doing just great, probably making record profits. Grocery interests are doing just fine. Virtually everywhere you look, the people who turn it into breakfast food and puff it and crisp it and mangle it and shape it and box it and package it and send it to the store shelves and charge $4 for it, they do just fine. What about the person who produces it and takes all the risks and does all the work to produce the food out there in the family farm. They are the ones going broke in record numbers. In my State, they have had so many farm sales this spring they had to call auctioneers out of retirement to handle the sales. The question for the Congress is whether we are we going to do something that says to the family farmers: ``You matter. You are important to this country, and we want to provide something that helps you in a range of areas?'' We ought to help because we have a trade system in this country that, in my judgment, sells out the interests of producers. Our system of trade is not fair. We say to farmers, ``We're upset with Cuba; therefore, we won't ship grain to Cuba, and you pay the cost of that lost market. We're upset with Libya; we will not allow you to ship grain to Libya, and you pay the cost, Mr. and Mrs. Farmer, for that lost market.'' Ten percent of the wheat market in the world is off limits to our farmers. And farmers are told that is a foreign policy judgment, and we want you to pay the cost of it. That is not fair. We also negotiate trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, and many others. In every set of circumstances, somehow we end up losing. We send negotiators out and they can lose in a day. I do not understand that. Will Rogers said some 60 years ago, ``The United States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference.'' He surely must have been thinking about our trade negotiators. How can they lose so quickly? Let s talk about Canada. They negotiated an agreement with Canada which fundamentally sells out the interests of our farmers. Every day, in every way, there is a flood of unfairly subsidized grain coming into this country eating away at the profits of our farmers, diminishing our price. When we say to the Canadians, ``We think you are violating the antidumping laws of this country, and we demand you open your books to our inspectors,'' they thumb their noses at us and say, ``Go fly a kite. You have no ability to determine the trade practices of Canada.'' This incidentally is happening despite the fact that the trade negotiator who negotiated the trade agreement with Canada promised in writing it would not happen. That promise was not worth the paper it was written on. I can speak at great length about trade. Why can't we get more wheat into China? Why can't we get more beef into Japan? Why can't we get raw potatoes into Mexico? Why can you drink all the Mexican beer up here you can possibly consume in a lifetime, but try to order an American beer in Mexico. Yes, when I talk about beer, I am talking about barley. But rather than talk at great length about all of those trade problems that confront our farmers and diminish their price, my point is, this isn't their fault. The Federal Government, through a series of policy initiatives must take some responsibility. First of all, there were bad trade deals that were negotiated poorly, and then not enforced at all. Secondly, there has been a ravaging crop disease which decimates the quantity and quality of a crop. Then third, prices have collapsed following a farm bill that was passed by this Congress. which pulled the rug out from family farmers, and left them without a working safety net. When Congress passed the farm bill a couple years ago, the price of wheat peaked at $5.75 a bushel. They called it the Freedom to Farm bill. To pull the rug out from under family farmers and say, ``We're going to get rid of the price supports for you,'' would be like saying to the minimum wage folks, ``Let's cut the minimum wage to $1 an hour and call it freedom to work.'' That is what freedom to farm is all about. Since freedom to farm was passed, the price of wheat has gone straight down. Now it is almost $2 a bushel below what it costs the family farmer to raise wheat or to produce wheat. Family farmers cannot continue with prices below their costs of production. This Congress has to decide whether it wants family farmers in our country's future or doesn't it? If it does, the question becomes what can and must we do together? What can Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals and moderates do together? What can and must we do together to develop some kind of basic safety net to say to family farmers, ``You matter. When prices collapse, and you are confronting monopolies on the upside and monopolies on the downside, or you are confronting unfair trade agreements, or you are confronting sanctions all around the world, or when you are confronting crop disease that is devastating your crops, then this Government cares about that, and the rest of the American people will provide some basic kind of safety net for you.'' That is going to be the question that is posed to Members of Congress in the coming couple of weeks: Do family farmers matter? If they do, what can we do together to try to say to these people, ``We'll give you some hope for the future. If you don't get a decent price at the marketplace, we'll provide a support mechanism of some type to get you over this price valley.'' For decades, this country had decided that when farm prices collapse, we will build a bridge across those price valleys, because family farming matters and we want family farmers to be able to populate this country and retain broad-based economic ownership of the land in America. That is the question we have to confront in the next couple of days and couple of weeks as we talk about this farm crisis that gets worse by the day and is affecting more and more areas of the country. It is true that North Dakota is hardest hit. It is true that North Dakota had a 98-percent loss of net farm income for family farmers in our State. That is devastating. But it is also the case that crop disease called scab or fusarium head blight is spreading across this country. And it is also true that collapsed grain prices eventually will cause the same kind of problems they cause for our farmers in other parts of the United States. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor. Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I might respond to the inquiry of the Senator from Iowa, who has used the floor to describe his sense of the Senate resolution. The problem in North Dakota has been that family farmers lost 98 percent of their income last year as compared to 1996. They planted a crop and they discovered that the crop was devastated by disease. The worst crop disease in this century has hit our part of the country. It has also touched Minnesota, Montana, South Dakota, and some other areas, but none quite as devastating as in North Dakota. So a farmer plants a crop and hopes it grows. When it grows he hopes it avoids the insects, avoids the drought, avoids too much water, and avoids disease. Unfortunately, our crop didn't, it was devastated by disease. Then the farmer harvests those crops, or is what left of them. That is not easy. I have been out on harvests plenty of times in my life. It is tough work. The farmer drives his truck into town and pulls it up to the county elevator and unloads that grain. The harvest in that truck box has all of your hopes and dreams for an entire year. That harvest in the truck box determines whether you are going to be able to feed your family, whether you are going to continue farming, and whether you are going to be able to pursue your hopes and dreams on the farm. That is what is in that truck box. Then they unload that truck, and they put that durum, or the wheat or the barley, into that country grain elevator, and it is weighed, evaluated. And the elevator operator says, ``Well, Mr. Farmer, Mrs. Farmer, we have decided that your grain is worth $2.75 a bushel.'' You didn't get much for it because you had a lot of disease. But what you got is worth $2.75 a bushel. The farmer looks at the price and says, ``Well, the problem is it cost me $5 a bushel to raise that grain.'' That is in short exactly what has been happening in our State. It has been devastated by disease and low prices. Think of it this way: Ask any group of families living on any block of this country, any group of businesses on any Main Street of America, for that matter any legislators who are standing visiting in a circle. Ask them about what they would do if they were losing 98 percent of their income. Ask the folks on the block, the folks on Main Street, the legislators, anyone, how would you like to lose 98 percent of your income? Then ask yourself: How am I going to provide for my family? How am I going to meet the future and continue to farm? That is what has happened to our family farmers. I will read some letters. I will not do it at the moment, but I will read some letters of some farm families in North Dakota who were forced to sell out this year. They say, ``Well, we are good farmers. We don't spend money frivolously. We are not going out at night. We work. We work to the bone, and we try. We try hard. And the fact is we are going broke. Yet, everybody else dealing with this grain that we produce is making money.'' The people who haul it, the railroads, have record profits. The people who put it in the mill have record profits. The people who make it into breakfast cereal have record profits. Take some wheat, puff it up, call it ``Puffed Wheat,'' put it on the grocery shelf, charge $4 or $5 for it, or put it in bread. The farmer gets less than the heel. Farm prices have collapsed. Have bread prices come down? I don't think so. Have cereal prices come down? I don't think so. Yet everybody in the process, except the people who grow the food, is making money. There is one final point I want to make. I was on the floor of the Senate yesterday pointing out that half way around this globe of ours there are people climbing trees for food. Old women are climbing trees in Sudan to forage leaves to eat. They are eating leaves from trees because they are dying of hunger. Over 1 million people are at threat of starvation in Sudan. The people on this side of the world are told, yes, there are 1 million people facing starvation. They are eating leaves off trees. But the food you raise on the family farms somehow doesn't have worth. It doesn't have value. That is a terrible, terrible disconnection of what we ought to be doing. So the answer to the question of the Senator from Iowa is that our farmers have been devastated more than in any other State largely because we have been hit harder by disease. But all farmers trying to market wheat at this point are discovering that the price of wheat has collapsed. Today the price is $2.99 a bushel at one of our local elevators in North Dakota. It was $5.75 just 2 years ago. The price today is what it was decades ago when the price of all the inputs was much, much less. At today's prices, farmers are losing over $2.00 per bushel. So the question facing us is whether we are going to do something that gives family farmers an opportunity to make a living. Does family farming have value to our society? I believe it is more than just dollars and cents. If you believe as I do that it is important, then the question becomes what is the solution. What kinds of solutions and what menu of choices can we select that will say to family farmers, ``You are not alone? When you hit price valleys, we will try to build bridges across those valleys because we want you in our future.'' Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Iowa for asking the question. I thank my colleagues for their indulgence so that I could answer.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, is the Senate in morning business?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to just talk briefly about two short items today, the first of which is the Patients' Bill of Rights legislation, which we hope the Senate will take up perhaps as early as this week. Some suggest that there isn't a need for legislation to ensure the quality of care provided by managed care plans. They believe, I suppose, as some insurance companies do, that things are just fine in managed care and health care in this country. But others, and that includes most of the American people, know better. They worry that health care in this country is now often directed not by doctors or other medical professionals but by some accountant in an insurance office 500 or 1,000 miles away from where the patient is. Let me describe, as we have nearly every day for some weeks, a case that illustrates why the American people are so anxious about what is happening in our health care system. This is the example of Mr. Vaughn Dashiell. Vaughn Dashiell is one more reason why HMO reform, or managed care reform, in the form of the Patients' Bill of Rights, should be brought before the Senate. Vaughn lived with his wife, Patricia, and their three children in Alexandria, VA, not too far from the U.S. Capitol. He owned and operated his own printing company. On November 20, 1996, Vaughn stayed home from work. He had awakened that morning sick, suffering from a sore throat, a dry mouth and tunnel vision that limited his sight to only 18 inches. He tried to get an appointment to see a doctor within his HMO network but was told there were no appointments available at his designated facility. He was able to speak only to an HMO-employed nurse on duty over the phone. She could have told Vaughn to go to an emergency room for treatment, but instead she told him to make a regular appointment, even though none were available. So here is someone who has health care coverage, wakes up ill, calls the HMO, can't speak to a doctor, instead speaks to a nurse, and the nurse says, ``Make an appointment,'' but no appointments are available. As Vaughn's symptoms worsened, he called his HMO again requesting permission to see a doctor somewhere, or to go to a nearby emergency room for treatment. He was told only to wait and that he would receive a call back from a doctor on duty. When the doctor on duty was consulted, he agreed that Vaughn should go to an emergency room, but neither made a call himself, nor followed-up to see that Vaughn was contacted. And that night Vaughn Dashiell was not contacted--not by the nurse, not by the doctor, or by any other HMO staff regarding his condition and the request he had made for health care. The next morning, Patricia Dashiell found her husband incoherent, with his eyes rolling. She hurriedly called the HMO hoping for an answer to Vaughn's problem, and they advised her to call 911. She called 911 and Vaughn arrived at the hospital at 9:18 a.m. in a diabetic coma. His blood sugar level was more than 20 times greater than the normal level. Just 2 hours after being rushed to the emergency room, Vaughn was dead from hyperglycemia. He was 39 years old. He had health insurance coverage, but he couldn't get care when he needed it, and he died. This should not happen in this country. Health insurers should not put profits ahead of patients. And too often these days, they do. Vaughn Dashiell's condition would have and could have been treated if his health plan had enabled him to get care when he needed it. But all over this country, we are hearing of patients who need health care and are told by those who have covered them with health insurance, ``It is not now available.'' The Patients' Bill of Rights we have offered in the Senate is very simple. This legislation says that people who have health insurance coverage ought to get the health care they need when they have an urgent need for it. They ought to be able to seek emergency room care if a reasonable person would consider it an emergency. They ought to be able to see the doctor they need for the health care problem they are experiencing. Patients have a right to know all of the options for the treatment of their problem, not just the cheapest, and there are a whole series of other provisions to ensure that medical care will be practiced in a doctor's office or a hospital room, not an insurance office 1,000 miles away. I have told, often, of the woman who, having fallen from a horse and hitting her head severely, was in an ambulance, with her brain swelling, on the way to the hospital. She had the presence of mind to tell the ambulance driver that she wanted to be driven to the hospital further away rather than to the nearby hospital. And when she recovered, she was asked why she had insisted, as she was lying there injured in the back of the ambulance with her brain swelling, on being taken to the hospital further away. She said it was because she knew the reputation of the closer hospital, and she knew that it was a for- profit institution with a reputation for being interested in its profit and loss margin than its patients' care. She did not want her body delivered to an emergency room where she would be looked at in terms of dollars and cents. That story and the tragic story of Vaughn Dashiell and so many others like it that we have presented to the Senate daily now for so many weeks, describes the anxiety and concern people have in this country. We have the best health care in the world in many respects, but it is available to people in need of health care only if they are able to access the kind of doctors they need when they have need for that medical specialty. It is available only if they are able to get to an emergency room when they have need for emergency care. When we have American citizens--thousands and thousand and thousands of them--who are denied care because someone in an office 500 miles away said, ``Well, gee, that care is not needed, it is not to be delivered, it is not available,'' then the American people have a right to say, ``What on Earth kind of health care system is this?'' One of the stories we presented earlier on the floor of the Senate was of a young boy with cerebral palsy whose managed care officials determined that he had only a 50 percent chance of being able to walk by age 5. And because he had only a 50 percent chance of being able to walk by age 5, plan officials decided that was a minimal benefit and they would withhold it from that young child; it was not cost effective. It was a minimal benefit to have a 50 percent chance of being able to walk when you are 5 years old. Shame on the people who make those judgments. Shame on them. We are saying with the Patients' Bill of Rights that those who need medical treatment in this country have certain rights, and those who deliver medical treatment certainly should be cost conscious, but cost ought not take precedence over quality. Those who have coverage for their health care needs ought to be able to expect to get their needs taken care of and responded to adequately. That is, regrettably, not the case in many parts of our country today. We are led to believe that perhaps this week we will take up some form of the Patients' Bill of Rights. If that happens, it will be the right subject to be debated. It is a subject Americans expect to be addressed. I, as a cosponsor of the Patients' Bill of Rights, feel, as will many of my colleagues, that it is time for us to address this important issue on behalf of the American people.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to make some remarks on the subject of the farm crisis that exists in North Dakota and other parts of the country, and discuss some legislation a number of us intend to offer in the coming days and weeks dealing with that issue. As a way of describing that issue, the New York Times had a front- page story yesterday that talks about it. The article reports, ``As the national economy is booming, lawmakers have begun to focus on one of the few places in the country where times are bad--the northern plains where wheat and livestock prices have plunged and many farmers are desperate.'' The story goes on to describe the condition in North Dakota and some other States where we have a serious agricultural crisis. Collapsing profits in agriculture mean that we are seeing family farmers going out of business at a record pace. Let me describe that with one chart for those who watch these proceedings. In my home State of North Dakota, net farm income has dropped 98 percent in 1 year. That's right; a 98- percent drop in net farm income in 1 year. Then ask yourself what this statistic means. Ask yourself what would be the result for you, your neighbor, or your community, if you experienced a 98-percent drop in net income? That is what the farmers of North Dakota are facing because of collapsed grain prices and the worst crop disease in a century. The primary crop disease they face is called scab, or fusarium head blight, and it has devastated wheat and barley crops and some others. The combination of crop disease and a collapsed grain price has produced a farm crisis that is very, very serious and to which this Congress must respond. In the same New York Times article, it says some who wrote the current farm bill two years ago--which I did not support and voted against it--say that a free-market agricultural policy is the best. It quotes the authors of the farm bill as saying ``Farmers can best be helped by people staying out of their hair and promoting export markets.'' I want to describe part of the problem that farmers face with this kind of free-trade philosophy. There really isn't free trade for farmers. There isn't a free market for farmers. On both ends, they are pinched badly and hurt badly. On one end where they are trying to sell their product, they are trying to sell up through the neck of a bottle. The iron fist around the neck is the grain trade firms, the millers, the railroads where three, four, or five firms control virtually all of it and they squeeze back down resulting in increased costs for farmers and depressed farm prices. So there is no free market moving up. How about on the back side of it all? Is there a free market in trade? No; through our backdoor comes a flood of Canadian grain which is unfairly subsidized in my judgment, and undercuts our farmers and their prices. While that happens every day, I want to read another news story. It says: ``Official's Beanie Babies Stir Furor.'' I don't know what page this was on in the paper. It was a fairly large story about Beanie Babies--Beanie Babies, mind you. No offense to people who collect them and like them, but I have not spent a nanosecond of my life thinking about Beanie Babies. This story is about the U.S. Trade Ambassador who came home from China and apparently had purchased some Beanie Babies in China. She discovered, I guess to her embarrassment, that you can't bring 40 Beanie Babies into this country from China. The Beanie Babies are made in China for an American firm. They make the Beanie Babies in China, and then they ship the Beanie Babies back to the United States for sale in the United States. But you can't buy 40 Beanie Babies in China and haul them back here. Apparently, visitors are restricted to one Beanie Baby from China to the United States. I am told also you are restricted to one Beanie Baby from Canada to the United States. Those of us who live up near the Canadian border see a lot of things coming in from Canada. I went up to the Canadian border one day with Earl Jensen of Bowbells, ND. We had a little 2-ton orange 10-year-old truck. We tried to take a few bushels of durum wheat into Canada. All the way up to the border, we met 18-wheelers coming from Canada to the United States full of Canadian wheat. We saw truck after truck after truck after truck, all full of wheat, all the way to the border. Earl and I got to the border with this little 10-year-old orange truck. Do you think we could get one quarter-truckload of durum into Canada? They said: No, you can't do that. You can flood the market in the United States with Canadian grain, but you can't get one little orange truckload of durum wheat into Canada. When it comes to restricting imports to the United States, we say one Beanie Baby. Boy, we're tough on Beanie Babies. And if you exceed one Beanie Baby, you're apparently in huge trouble. But you can ship all the durum wheat, all the spring wheat and barley you want, and nobody is going to pay any mind at all. Nobody is going to care. In fact, if they unfairly subsidize it, as I am convinced they are doing, it still doesn't seem to matter. When we send auditors up to Canada to get into the books and records of the Canadian Wheat Board to check it out, the Canadian Wheat Board says, ``Go fly a kite, we don't intend to show you any information; we intend to give you no records about our trade into the United States.'' I say to those quoted in the New York Times and those in this Chamber who say, ``Gee, what we should do is rely on this free-market stuff,'' that there is no free market. There is no free market on either end, not the top end through which farmers market their products and not the back end through which they are facing unfair competition coming into this country with unfairly subsidized grain. We have farmers going broke in record numbers. We face a very serious farm crisis. A new farm bill was written 2 years ago. When that farm bill was written, it was written by folks who said, ``Let's have the farmers operate in whatever the free-market system is.'' Some of us said the problem is, there isn't a free market and if farmers run into price collapse, we are in a situation where they will not be able to get over that pricing valley. When they hit a price collapse, there needs to be a bridge over that price valley. If you don't help family farmers over that valley, then they go broke. Some people say, ``That's okay, it doesn't matter, we don't care if we have family farmers.'' I suppose some people don't. They don't care if we end up with big farms, agrifactories, farming from the west coast to the east coast. Does it matter? It seems to me it matters. For those who haven't been on a farm, if you look out the plane at night and you see the yard lights dotting the landscape, each of those lights is a family living on a family farm. These family farmers take more risks than almost anyone else in this country doing business. They risk whether they will get a crop. They put all their money in their crop, including the cost of seed and fertilizer, as they plant their fields in the spring. They have no idea whether there will be a dozen or more weather-related events that might destroy their crop. There is the threat of insects, the threat of hail, the threat of drought, the threat of too much moisture, among other things. Yet, if they are fortunate enough to get a crop, they might well end up seeing the market as it exists today with collapsed prices. And they are facing big interests that clap about that. They say, ``Gee, that's great. We love collapsed prices.'' The big grain millers, they think that is just fine. Only four firms control almost sixty percent of the flour milling in this country. I suppose the grocery manufacturers think that is just fine, because they seem to love low farm prices. The problem is family farmers can't survive. They are the seed bed of American enterprise and the home of family values that have always nurtured and flowed from family farms to small towns and into big cities. It is these family farmers, who are the ones that we lose. This is not just about dollars and cents. It is about something much more important to this country's future than just dollars and cents. And that is why during this week, next week and beyond, we feel the need and the urgency to propose some changes here on the floor of the Senate. We must deal with farm policy in a way that addresses the issue of trade, in a way that addresses the issue of the misplaced priorities within a system that worries about Beanie Babies on the same day that nobody seems to care much about family farmers. We think there are some things that can be done to extend a helping hand to family farmers, and to say, that they matter in this country's future. When we offer legislation on the floor of the Senate, I expect there will be those who say, as they did 2 weeks ago, that the current farm bill is working just fine. I dearly wish we could give them a deed this afternoon and say, ``Here. You think it's working fine? Here is your farm. We'll give you 1,000 acres. Buy some fuel and fertilizers and seed, and farm until you go broke. When you go broke--and you will--you come back and tell us how well your farm policy works.'' I just wish we could do that. But, of course, there is not time because this crisis requires action on a much more immediate basis. Mr. President, we expect to have a substantial debate about that in the coming days. I hope that Republicans and Democrats will understand the merit, the value, and the worth of family farming in this country's future. I hope that we will decide to embark upon a farm policy that says to family farmers that when prices collapse and when you are ravaged by the worst crop disease of the century, we want to help you over those price valleys. We want you to be a part of this country's future. We need a farm policy that tells family farmers that they matter from the standpoint of social and economic policy. Here we are in a country that produces the most wholesome quality food at the lowest percent of disposable income of anywhere in the world. Family farmers do matter in this country's future. I hope that will be the result of the debate we have here in the next month or two in the U.S. Senate. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Ms. COLLINS addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, our health care system is in a state of crisis--a crisis of confidence. Many Americans no longer believe that their insurance companies can provide them with the access to care or quality of service they need. Today I continue our series of stories describing how some managed care plans seem to have put cost saving before life-saving. The experience of Vaughn Dashiell is just one more example of the pressing need for Congress to act now to protect the rights of patients. Vaughn Dashiell lived with his wife, Patricia, and their three children in Alexandria, Virginia. Vaughn owned and operated his own printing company. On November 20, 1996, Vaughn stayed home sick from work suffering from a sore throat, dry mouth, and tunnel vision that limited his sight to 18 inches. He tried to get an appointment to see a doctor within his HMO network, but was told that none were available at his designated facility. Vaughn was able to speak only to the HMO-employed nurse on duty over the phone. She could have told Vaughn to go to an emergency room for treatment, but instead, told him to make a regular appointment although none were available. As Vaughn's symptoms worsened, he called his HMO again requesting permission to see a doctor somewhere, or to go to a nearby emergency room. Vaughn was told only to wait and that he would receive a call back from a doctor on duty. When the doctor on duty was consulted, he agreed that Vaughn should go to an emergency room, but neither made a call himself, nor followed up to see that Vaughn was contacted. That night, Vaughn was not contacted, not by the nurse, the doctor, or any other HMO staff regarding his condition and requests for care. The next morning, Patricia found Vaughn incoherent, with his ``eyes rolling''. She hurriedly called the HMO, hoping for an answer to Vaughn's problem. They advised her to call 911. Vaughn arrived at the hospital at 9:18 am in a diabetic coma. His blood sugar level was more than twenty times greater than the normal level. Just over two hours after being rushed to the emergency room, Vaughn was dead from hyperglycemia. He was only 39 years old. This should not happen in America. Health insurers should not be allowed to put profit before patients. Vaughn Dashiell's condition would have been treatable and curable if the health plan had enabled him to get the care he needed. But for an HMO driven by cutting costs, the needs of the patient did not come first. Had this HMO not placed their patients in the hands of a system weak in oversight and follow-up and instead allowed Mr. Dashiell the opportunity to see a doctor when he first felt threatened, he might still be alive today. Mr. President, we must take up and pass meaningful patient protections this year. We have a bill, S. 1890, that would prevent tragedies like this from occurring. Under our plan, Vaughn would have had guaranteed access to needed care, especially in the case of an emergency. Under our bill, members of HMOs would be able to go to an emergency room without seeking their plan's approval if they felt their life was in danger. This is only common sense. It should not be controversial. I will appeal once again to the Republican leaders of this body: Please bring our Patients' Bill of Rights to the floor for action. The President has promised to sign it into law. We are wasting valuable time.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in the Washington Post this week there was an article entitled ``Sudan's Famine Overwhelms Aid Effort.'' I want to read a couple of sentences from this article, because I was struck by the concurrence of what I read about what is happening in Sudan and what I know is happening in North Dakota and in much of the farm belt. As the gate is about to close for the night on the feeding center here, near-lifeless bodies start turning up everywhere. Three have collapsed just outside the reed walls of the compound, human skeletons so thin they look two- dimensional against the ground. Three, then four, then five, then, somehow, eight others have been carried inside and laid among the swarm of gaunt people still strong enough to beckon medical workers who have spent the day ministering to the hundreds gathered outside this place that has food. The workers move from body to body, feeling for a pulse, crumbling high-calorie biscuits into palms, pouring sugar water from gourd to mouth. The impossibly sunken cheeks of a man too weak to hold his head up by himself fall deeper into his face as he slurps. . . . Four months after aid agencies issued warnings of impending famine in southern Sudan--and two months after they marshaled public opinion in the name of heading it off--starvation has arrived regardless. Across a vast region unsettled by civil war and erratic weather, the United Nations now says, 1.2 million people are at risk of death from hunger. They are living on the leaves of trees. I heard a fellow who visited Sudan describe old women climbing trees to forage leaves to eat. When I think that halfway around the world people are dying of starvation, and people are climbing trees to eat leaves on trees, I can t help but think that on the other side of the world that our family farmers who produce food in the most abundant quantity anywhere on the Earth are being told that their production has no merit, and no value. The price of farm commodities collapses, and family farmers are told, ``Well, that's the breaks. That is the way things are. You produce it, and it should be worth $4.50 or $5 to cover the cost of production, and then you go put it on a truck and drive it to an elevator, and it is worth $3. Somehow the market doesn't value it. Your crop doesn't have worth, and doesn't have merit.'' I think to myself that there is something kind of Byzantine about a world in which that happens. Just detach yourself from the globe for a moment and look at a globe sitting out here with people on this side starving and people on this side who are operating family farms going broke because they are told their food doesn't have value. Gosh. This is not true with military equipment. Military equipment always has value. They ship it all around the world every day in every way, and there is plenty of money to finance it. The poorest countries in the world can buy military equipment. The poorest countries in the world can afford apparently the best jet planes, tanks, guns, and shells. But when it comes to food, the people who need it are starving, and the people who produce it--our family farmers--are told it doesn't have worth and they can go broke. Let me describe what is happening in our part of the world. I might say that I served for almost 10 years on the Hunger Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. I am well familiar with the famine that occurred in Ethiopia. I am well familiar with past famines in Sudan and other parts of the world where millions have died of starvation. This is happening on a planet where, in some parts of the earth we produce food in great abundant quantity and those who produce it are told it has too little value. We have family farmers today who have invested everything, their lives, 10, 20, 30 years into running a family farm far out in the country, with the yard light on at night, raising their family, sending their kids to school, getting up early to do the chores, working all day, doing chores at night, and discover when they check their books and records that they are losing money and losing their farms. Here is what happened to the price of wheat in the last couple of years. Wheat prices have fallen 53 percent since the current farm law was passed. Prices have collapsed like a down escalator, and yet some people say, ``Gee, everything is working just fine.'' In fact, I heard some people say the farm program is working just fine. It is not working just fine. The price of wheat is collapsing. On top of this, in our State we have the worst crop disease in a century. This is a crop disease that is pervasive. It is called fusarium head blight, commonly called scab. Farmers are hit by collapsed prices and crop diseases that are devastating. So we have, it seems to me, a twin failure here on this globe of ours. We have people who don't have anything to eat and are starving and dying in the streets in Sudan. Then we have families who are failing in the Farm Belt who have risked everything they have to run a family farm and are told, when they truck that wheat and barley that makes the foodstuffs that can be life-saving to others, that somehow this has no value. At least, they are told its value is so diminished that you can't make a decent living growing this grain. Let me show you what has happened to these family farmers in my State. In 1 year, there has been a 98-percent reduction in net income for family farmers. That's right, 98 percent. Go to any neighborhood, any street, anyplace in this country and ask anybody how will you handle it, how will you fare, what will your life be like, if somebody takes away 98 percent of your income? This describes a serious economic emergency. In my State, these red counties which make up a third of our counties, have been declared disaster counties every single year for 5 years--every year. Not just occasionally, every year. Incidentally, North Dakota is 10 times the size of Massachusetts in land mass. Those family farmers are trying to run a farm out here and trying to raise a crop they can plant and harvest. They have discovered that you cannot do it when you have these excessive wet cycles and pervasive crop disease so they don't get much of a crop. Then if they do get a crop, they send it to the market and it is underpriced because the price has collapsed. The reason I make this point is we have family farmers in North Dakota--and in other parts of the Farm Belt, but especially in North Dakota--who are suffering terribly. We need to do something about that. Do we need to respond to the Sudan with respect to food aid, substantially increased quantities of Food for Peace, title II and title III and others? Yes, we do. It is this country's obligation to do that. We ought to do it. Doing so, however, also obligates us, it seems to me, to do something to help those family farmers in our Farm Belt who are losing their hopes and their dreams. ``This is the worst plant disease epidemic that the United States has faced with any major crop in this country.'' Brian Steffenson of North Dakota State University said that last week. That is just one part of the price collapse and crop disease that has put us in a devastating situation. Steffenson also said, ``North Dakota's barley industry is hanging on by a thread, even though it is typically the leader in feed and malting barley production in the nation.'' Farmers not only face disease and low prices, but also have a problem of selling into highly concentrated markets. Family farmers are trying to figure out how they market their commodity effectively. If they are raising beef, four packers control 87 percent. If they raise pork, its four packers that control 60 percent. Four firms control 55 percent of broilers. If they have sheep, four packers control 73 percent of sheep slaughter. Grain facilities at our ports are controlled by four firms which have 59 percent. In flour milling, four firms control 62 percent. In wet corn milling, four firms control 74 percent. You get the picture. One farmer out there against that kind of market power that puts downward pressure on all these prices. My point is this: We have a responsibility in this Congress to care about economic injury to important industries in this country, and none is more important, in my judgment, than family farming. Family farming is, and always has been, since Thomas Jefferson so described it as the most important enterprise in this country. Family farming is still important in this country, and we must make a commitment to deal with the economic injury to people who are out there, threatened with the loss of their livelihoods and the loss of their homes and dreams on their family farms. In the coming week we intend to meet with the President. In the coming weeks we intend to come to the Congress and ask Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, all of them, to join us to say: We are not only profamily, we are profamily farming, and during times of emergencies we want to reach out and help. A country that can provide foreign aid can also provide some farm aid in times of trouble, and we have not had a time of trouble anywhere close to this for many, many decades. Just this morning one of the industry leaders in North Dakota indicated that he thinks we are headed towards a period that is about as bad as the 1930s on the family farm. We have an obligation to respond. I will ask the cooperation of the majority leader, the minority leader, and all people of good will here in this Congress who care, as I do, about the enterprise of family farming and the fortunes of those families in rural America. I hope we can pass a piece of legislation in the next several weeks to respond to this emergency. I thank the Senator from Mississippi for his indulgence.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware. I am pleased to speak in support of this legislation. I will ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was pleased to be a cosponsor of this particular proposal when it was offered by Senator Murray in the Senate Appropriations Committee. I know that Senator Murray offered it on behalf of herself and Senator Roberts from Kansas, and I was pleased then to cosponsor it. It is the right thing to do. I must say, however, it is inching along in the right direction. This is not taking giant steps today. It is inching along in the right direction. The question of sanctions, especially sanctions in international trade that say to the American farmer, you bear the entire cost of sanctions that we impose for foreign policy reasons; we are upset with Cuba so let's cut Cuba off so they can't get any grain. We are upset with Iran, Iraq, Libya, let's cut them off so they can't buy grain--10 percent of the world's wheat market is off limits to American farmers because, for foreign policy purposes, this country has decided that is what ought to be done. I fundamentally disagree with that. Hubert Humphrey used to say send them anything they can't shoot back. Translated, he meant we ought not cut off food shipments around the world. I don't think we ought to cut off food shipments. All that does is hurt the poor people and hungry people around the world. But the fact is we do have sanctions in place, and I think in addition to a piece of legislation today that says with respect to the sanctions now dealing with Pakistan and India, that it will not include GSM credits, which therefore would then facilitate the flow of grain from the Northwest in this case. That is a step in the right direction, albeit a small one. We don't ship grain to Pakistan. They are going to make these purchases largely from the Northwest. But farmers are farmers, and the wheat market is the wheat market. The fact is the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray, described very well the crisis that exists in farm country today. Wheat farmers in this country have seen wheat prices on the international marketplace, on the national markets collapse, just drop to the cellar. In my State, we not only have just rock-bottom wheat prices, we have the worst crop disease in a full century. It is called fusarium head blight. We call it scab. It has devastated the crops. So a farmer takes all the risks. They plant the seed, hope it will grow, hope insects don't come, hope it doesn't get destroyed by hail, hope it doesn't rain too much, hope it rains enough. Finally, all of those things are OK. They hope they raise a crop, and when they raise a crop they hope it isn't devastated by disease. They take the grain to the elevator in their 2-ton truck and discover they get $2 a bushel less than it cost them to raise it. And they go out of business hand over fist. We have so many auction sales right now they are calling auctioneers out of retirement to handle them. We have a huge problem. We have to deal with the underlying farm bill. I know some people think it is working just fine. Gee, this is just great. It is not just great. It is not working just fine. We are pulling the rug out from family farmers in price support and calling it freedom to farm. It is like taking the minimum wage to a dollar an hour and calling it freedom to work. It doesn't make any sense. We need to deal with the underlying problem. We need to deal with the larger trade problems. We can't get wheat to China. Japan isn't buying enough beef. We have had a flood of unfairly subsidized imports come in in durum and spring wheat and barley from Canada. We have a whole range of problems. This bill deals with one small issue that is urgent and must be dealt with now. It deals with, in GSM, credit issues that will allow us to ship wheat to Pakistan and India. I support that. But we have a lot more to do. We ought to decide as a Congress right now that sanctions will not include food shipments, period. Let's get that 10 percent of the world wheat market back for American farmers. Second, we ought to decide if there are those who insist that sanctions include food shipments from American farmers to overseas markets, then farmers ought to be reimbursed for the cost and the loss. Why should farmers be told, here is our new foreign policy and you pay the price. You bear the cost. Why should farmers be sent that bill and told to pay up. If it is our belief that the best foreign policy is to shut off food shipments through sanctions to some part of the world, why not as a part of our foreign policy through the State Department or part of our defense policy through the Defense Department, why not reimburse family farmers who are told now they bear the entire cost of those sanctions. So I stand today to say again I appreciate this legislation. Senator Murray and Senator Roberts initiated it, at least on the Senate side, and I was pleased the day that Senator Murray introduced it on behalf of her and Senator Roberts. I am pleased to be a cosponsor. It is the right thing to do right now. But there is much, much, much more to do if we are going to address in a real and significant way the farm crisis. This is as tough as I have ever seen it in rural America. I am not going to go further talking about the farm problem and the trade problem because they are abiding and tough and difficult, and we must get about the business of dealing with it. And I expect that in the coming couple of weeks we are going to have a big discussion. I know some people don't have farmers in their areas; they don't have to deal with farm problems every day. I think it is an opportunity to deal with farm problems. Family farmers are the roots of our society. Family values originate on the family farm and they nurture small towns and big cities in this country and always have. I am pleased to represent a State of family farmers, and I think it is interesting to see people who wouldn't know a razorback hog from a pickup truck tell us here in Washington, DC, all about the theory of family farming. The fact is family farmers don't live on theory. They risk everything they have to try to raise a crop and hope when they have raised a crop to be able to sell it to make a decent living. Today the sad answer is this economy doesn't produce that because we have a whole series of problems, one of which, a small one, is addressed by this bill, and that is the potential cutoff of a foreign market for western wheat. This bill addresses it, and I am pleased to be a cosponsor. But I hope in the coming weeks we will do much, much, much more to address the crisis faced by family farmers. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are never going to be accused of legislative speeding around here. It is fascinating to me that this bill has been kicking around for what, 10 months or so? And all of a sudden in the last couple of minutes we are dealing with $1 billion a minute, if I get 2 minutes. If I get $1 billion a minute, and he gets $1 billion a minute, it is a $2 billion tax break provided in the closing minutes of a conference report. Gosh. Month after month after month has gone by. Then all of sudden we have to get to the intersection in a nanosecond. That is fine. Some days I might have objected, but I am in such an awfully good mood today that I am persuaded to speak for 2 or 3 minutes and then sit down. First point: It is not going to kill the bill if we dump a $2 billion provision stuck in the middle of this piece of legislation by folks that didn't want a debate on it, didn't want votes in the House or the Senate on it. Getting rid of that provision won't kill the bill. Do not be fooled by that. Nobody is talking about killing this bill. We are just talking about taking a sow's ear out of this bill. You know the old saying in my area, which is farm country, ``You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.'' There is nothing in this provision that you can make a silk purse out of, I guarantee you. This was not done in the regular way. The chairman indicated the 18- month holding period came not from the House or Senate. It came as part of a deal made by the White House and legislative leaders. That is true. That was a deal. It was a deal with respect to changing tax policy, and there was a lot of negotiation going on back and forth. That was a tax bill. That was a big tax bill. This is an IRS restructuring bill. All of a sudden, you have substantive changes in tax policy with no debate. That is the point I am making. Finally, it makes sense, in my judgment, to move in the direction of incentives for long-term holdings, not short-term holdings. That is precisely what the 18-month-rule did. It says there is a benefit to holding investments for the long term. Those who think in the longer term invest in the longer term. That is precisely what builds this country. But today we hear people say let's go back to the shorter term, let's think short-term, and let's provide big tax breaks to upper-income people who think that way. Those that have a couple hundred thousand dollars a year or more, if they will just think in the shorter term they get a big tax break. You talk about marching in the wrong direction. Get some drums and bugles here and just quicken the cadence. This doesn't make any sense at all. The reason I appeal the ruling of the Chair is we never had a chance to debate this. And I might add that the point of order that I raised would have been sustained prior to October 3, 1996, because for decades, going back to the 1930s, the rule that I cited had force. ``Conferees shall not insert in their report matter not committed to them by another House.'' That rule of the Senate would have persuaded the Presiding Officer to rule in my favor. But on October 3, 1996, the Senate did something, in my judgment, that was very ill-advised. It overturned a ruling by the Chair, and we forever changed this rule until the Senate votes to change it back. This would be a good opportunity to do that, because this is precisely the kind of mischief--$2 billion worth of mischief--that occurs in a conference committee with an item that was never in the House bill, never in the Senate bill, never debated, and never voted on. But here we find it folded neatly between the covers of this bill, which was supposed to have dealt with IRS restructuring. You got $2 billion you want to use for something. I say to Members of the Senate, you got $2 billion you want to use for something. What is your priority? What is your priority? To search out those with $200,000 or more in income and say, ``You know what you need. You need a tax cut, and that is the priority of the U.S. Senate. It is the priority of the U.S. House.'' Boy. I don't think that would match the priority most people would want to expose in the middle of the day here in the Senate in a debate. So that is the reason I have asked for this vote. Once again, I appreciate the Senator from Delaware and the work he has done. Much of what is in this piece of legislation I commend. It has great merit, but this provision should never have been stuck in that bill. I think everybody in the Senate knows it. If we will vote to overturn the ruling of the Chair, we will solve this problem without killing the bill.

Mr. DORGAN. I didn't know of any intention of delaying this. I don't think it would be a problem giving a couple of minutes to the Senator from Minnesota. I know he spoke earlier on the floor on the subject. As far as I am concerned, we are almost ready for a vote, except that the tabling motion came almost immediately. My appeal of the ruling of the Chair is a debatable motion, and the Senator from Delaware moved almost immediately to table, which prevented this from being a significant debate. That is the Senator s right, and I made my comments. But I wanted to respond briefly to the comments the Senator from Delaware made. I mean it seems to me that it wouldn't be a problem if I am allowed to speak for 3 minutes and the Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Minnesota for a couple of minutes, and we can have a vote. It seems to me to be quicker to get it done that way. Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. In that event, I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I might respond.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me begin by complimenting Senator Roth from Delaware. He is a serious, thoughtful legislator who does some awfully good work. There are times when I disagree very strongly with him; there are other times when I agree with his proposals. I think he does some excellent work in the Senate. I appreciate it. The conference report that is before the Senate contains some important legislative accomplishments. Some of the provisions in this conference report are useful, necessary, long overdue, and accomplishments that I very much support. I voted for this bill when we sent it to conference, and now it comes back from conference to the Senate as a conference report for our consideration. While this legislation has much to commend it and addresses some very important issues, it also, as is the case with a number of conference reports, attracted some lint, some dust, and some other material as it was massaged and manipulated in conference. One little provision that is, in fact, not so little, is Section 5001 of the bill. Page 332 of the statement of the managers explains this provision, and I want to read it for the Record. On page 332 of the report, it says: Title V. Additional Provisions A. Elimination of 18-Month Holding Period for Capital Gains. And then it says: House Bill No provision. Senate Amendment No provision. And it goes on to describe the ``conference agreement.'' That means, with respect to this issue, there was nothing in the House, nothing in the Senate, no debate, no discussion, no amendment, no vote. And all of a sudden, from the legislative darkness, a proposal emerged from the conference. It is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I guess. It is not surprising to those of us who watch conference committees. Senator Byrd was telling me today that he calls the conference committees ``the Third House.'' There is the House, the Senate, and then there is a separate body called ``Conference Committees.'' This is an example of what can happen in conference committees, of what can happen in that third body. Let me describe what this proposal is. This proposal expands favorable tax treatment for capital gains--that is, the lower tax rate for capital gains. It does that by reducing the holding period for eligibility for the lower capital gains tax rate from 18 months to 12 months. To get the lower tax rate, you only need to hold onto an investment for 12 months under this provision, rather than 18 months, as the law stands now. This proposal costs about $2 billion--$2 billion. Who will it benefit? Here is a chart that shows who it will benefit. Citizens for Tax Justice put these figures together. In shortening the holding period for capital gains from 18 months to 12 months, 90 percent of the benefit will go to taxpayers with incomes over $100,000 a year; over three-fourths of the benefit will go to taxpayers with incomes over $200,000 a year. I suppose those who talk about capital gains a lot will say, gee, this benefits everybody. Yes, it is kind of the cake and crumbs theory, with the cake at this end of the chart and a few crumbs down here. But the chart is clear enough. The benefit, by far, will inure to those whose incomes are very large. And the reduction, therefore, of the holding period from 18 months to 12 months is, in effect, a reduction in revenue of $2 billion, the benefit of which will go to the folks largely making $100,000 a year or more. As I indicated, that proposal was offered to the conference committee at the last minute, had never been considered by the House, had never been considered by the Senate, and was never debated or voted upon by either body. One would probably ask the question: Well, if there is $2 billion that is available to be used for one thing or another, how might it be used? Perhaps reducing the Federal debt. That might be one approach. The Presiding Officer shakes his head vigorously at that. I assume that a number of people would think maybe using that to reduce the Federal debt would be useful. Others still might say, well, this was done on about the same day, I believe, or within a day or two of the decision by the other body in this Congress--the House of Representatives --that they can't afford any longer to provide low-income energy assistance for home heating for poor people who live in cold climates. In the view of some members of the House majority, there is not enough money for that, so we will get rid of that. Or there is not enough money really to fully fund summer jobs for disadvantaged youth. So, what we will do is, we will just cut back on that. However, there are $2 billion available here, there is plenty of money for this--without debate, and without a separate vote in either the House or the Senate. But there is not enough money for some of those other priorities--priorities, for example, which I have come to the floor to talk about, of the needed investment in Indian schools. Indian schools--those are schools that are our responsibility, under the federal trust responsibility. I have talked about the condition of those schools and the repairs and investment that those schools need. I have talked about going into schools where the stench of sewer gas comes up into the classroom and requires children to be escorted out of the classrooms. I talked about schools I visited with 160 people sharing 1 water fountain and 2 bathrooms. It appears we don't have enough money to be helpful there. But someone found $2 billion all on its lonesome in the legislative darkness to be stuck into a piece of legislation, without debate in the House or the Senate, in a manner that will benefit a very few--benefit, in fact, those who probably need it least. So, what do we do about that? The conference report comes to the Senate and we are told: There is nothing you can do about that; that is the way it is. It is true you didn't have a chance to debate or discuss or vote on it. That is life. That is the way the system works. The problem is, there is a rule in the Senate called rule XXVIII, paragraph 2. I want to read the rule. This part of the Standing Rules of the Senate states that ``conferees shall not insert in their report matter not committed to them by either House.'' Let me read that again: ``Conferees''--talking about the conference committee and the conferees on the committee--``shall not insert in their report matter not committed to them by either House.'' That means if something isn't either in the House bill or the Senate bill, it is not an item that can be considered by the conference. That is the standing rule of the Senate, rule XXVIII, paragraph 2. So how does this provision get here? How do we, in the legislative crevices of conference committees, as they finish their work and as the world isn't watching quite so closely, discover that $2 billion can be spent just like that when a Senate rule says ``conferees shall not insert in their report matter not committed to them by either House"? Mr. President, I think the Senate will be advantaged, and I believe the other body will be advantaged, by a process that does not bring to us a piece of legislation dealing with the restructuring of the Internal Revenue Service that contains revenue provisions of this type. I don't have a problem with someone coming to the floor of the Senate and saying let's debate changing the capital gains provisions of the current Tax Code, let's debate changing the holding period, let's debate changing the rate; that is not a problem. I think it is perfectly appropriate that we have that debate. But I think it is inappropriate that the debate be prevented, as is now the case, when they stick in, during a conference, a provision that was neither in the House bill nor in the Senate bill--literally in the last few minutes of the conference--and there it sits as a $2 billion revenue item that a good number of other Members of the Senate might have used much differently--as I indicated, perhaps to reduce the Federal debt, or perhaps to restore money for low-income energy assistance for the poor, or for a number of other things. But this practice now exists that provides a way to avoid all the unpleasantness of debating these things on their own. So we now are in a situation where the conference report, which is a piece of legislation that has a great deal of merit and much to be commended, contains a provision to reduce the holding period for capital gains from 18 months to 12 months, which will provide $2 billion of tax reductions, 90 percent of which will accrue to those with over $100,000 in income, with no debate and no vote. In my judgment, that is not the best of what the Senate ought to be offering the American people. Point of Order So, Mr. President, with that in mind, I will make a point of order, and let me state the point of order. Section 5001 of the conference report contains matter that was not in either the House bill nor the Senate bill. Rule XXVIII, paragraph 2 of the Standing Rules of the Senate states that ``conferees shall not insert in their report matter not committed to them by either House.'' Pursuant to rule XXVIII, I make a point of order against section 5001 of the conference report. Mr. President, before I formally make that point of order, let me say that those who will respond to the point of order saying, ``Oh, gosh, this will kill the bill,'' are wrong. This will not kill the bill. We have waited on this bill month after month after month after month. It is a good bill, and it has a lot to commend it. All stripping out the $2 billion item that was added in the legislative darkness at the end of this conference would do would be to require the conference to reconvene, take that portion out, and ship it back to the House and Senate. You might say the House is not in today, and that is correct. So it might take a couple of days. But this would not kill the bill. Those who will argue that it will kill the bill will argue something that is specious. Let us decide as a Senate that this is not the way to do serious tax policy. This bill is too good for this provision. This is a set of circumstances where the chairman of the committee brings a bill to the floor, which causes me to commend him for the work he has done. I did that at the start of my discussion. But it is a bill that contains a provision that should never have been part of this bill. I recognize that the chairman of the committee and the ranking member were not the authors. At least from press reports I believe they were not the authors of this legislation added in conference. I fully understand that some things are not necessarily within their control, as conferences work. But I still feel strongly that this provision should not remain in the bill and, for that reason, Mr. President, I make the point of order under rule XXVIII of the Standing Rules.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me go ahead, and if that consent is agreed to----

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, our health care system is in a state of crisis--a crisis of confidence. Many Americans no longer believe that their insurance companies can provide them with the access to care or quality of service they need. Today I continue our series of stories describing how some managed care plans seem to have put cost saving before life-saving. The experience of Jacqueline Lee is just one more example of the pressing need for Congress to act now to protect the rights of patients. Jacqueline Lee lives in Bethesda, Maryland. A lover of the outdoors, she took a trip to hike in the Shenandoah Mountains in the summer of 1996. While walking on one of the trails, she lost her footing, and plummeted off of a 40-foot cliff to the ground below. Luckily for Jacqueline, she was quickly airlifted from the mountain to a hospital in Virginia. Amazingly, she survived the fall, sustaining fractures in her arms, pelvis, and her skull. Incredibly, her HMO refused to pay the more than $10,000 in hospital bills. They said Ms. Lee had failed to gain ``pre-authorization'' for her emergency room visit. To this insurer, the fact that she was unconscious was no exception. For over a year, she challenged her HMO and faced personal bankruptcy. Ultimately, the Maryland Insurance Administration ordered the insurer to pay the hospital and fined them as well for their initial refusal to cover Ms. Lee's medical expenses. Yet her struggle wasn't over. Within a year, after follow-up surgery for her injuries, Ms. Lee found herself back in the emergency room, fearing that she was suffering complications from surgery. Not wanting to go through another ordeal, this time she called her HMO beforehand. They told her they would pay only for her screening fees because the visit was not considered ``a medical emergency.'' Mr. President, we must take up and pass meaningful patient protections this year. We have a bill, S. 1890, that would prevent situations like this from occurring. Under our bill, Jacqueline Lee would have access to emergency care without preauthorization, and when she feels her life is in danger--not when the insurance company tells her it's okay. Under our bill, Jacqueline would have been covered for her injuries--she would not have had the rug pulled out from under her by the HMO. We have only a few weeks of legislative business left to act. Whatever we do will not alleviate the stress that Jacqueline Lee has endured, but we can ensure that others do not have to spend time fighting insurers that would be better spent fighting for their health. We must guarantee patients the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their health plan will be there to help them recuperate, not deny payment because it improves their bottom line.