Wendell Ford

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Under SAMHSA, as I understand it, the States are required to certify to SAMHSA that they are carrying out these laws and one of the requirements under SAMHSA, in the so-called Synar amendment, is sting operations. So the enforcement is there from the States certifying to SAMHSA that they are complying with the law. And $1 billion is there, as I recall, for the enforcement because, if you don't enforce it and you don't certify it, then you lose your block grants. And that is pretty tough enforcement, in my opinion.

Mr. FORD. Could I get in here just a minute?

Mr. FORD. That's Japanese.

Mr. FORD. I thank my neighbor. I have in my hand the explanation and rationale for the budget request of FDA as it relates to tobacco. There is not a goal in here. There is not a goal in here. So if SAMHSA does not have a goal, then FDA does not have one. So if the teeth are not in the SAMHSA amendment, there are no teeth in the FDA amendment that the Senator from Iowa said there were. So it is a little bit confusing to me for him to say that FDA has a goal and they have teeth, and yet when you look at the explanation of the program, the rationale for the budget request, there is no goal in here, none whatsoever. None whatsoever. We hear a lot about health, but the enforcement is there. The enforcement under SAMHSA is there. The ability to take from the States is there--that is enforcement--to carry out and comply with the law. Now, this is double jeopardy. We have SAMHSA on one side telling the States what to do. They passed a law. Now we are trying to give FDA $34 million, taken directly from the farmers' pocket--whether you want to agree with that or not--and say FDA is going to get involved, also. It just does not seem fair. Then the $34 million that we have, that the Senator is asking for, is the budget request of the administration prior to the court case which threw out several of these items and, therefore, $34 million would not be needed anyhow. So, I say to my colleagues, tobacco is something that everybody wants to shoot at. But what we forget about is the farmer. He is sitting there. He does not set a price on anything. What will you give me? So they say the manufacturers will pay all of it. They just reduce the price of tobacco, and the farmer pays for it. He pays for the warehouse; he pays for the grading; he pays the deficit reduction charge. All these are paid by the farmer before he gets the check. So now we find ourselves saying FDA has rules to go by. There are no rules. The Senator from Iowa gave me this piece of paper, and there are no criteria in here that say the States have to do anything, if they want to give them money to enforce it. Well, it is already there, and the States have already passed the laws. So, Madam President, I will yield the floor and I still have the opportunity to get 2\1/2\ minutes, I understand. I thank the Chair.

Mr. FORD. I thank the Chair. And I might get a few more minutes here. The motion to table the Harkin amendment is significant because the Senator from Iowa talked about the goals; there were no goals under the SAMHSA amendment or what we refer to as the Synar amendment.

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

Mr. FORD. May I be recognized since there is no pending business?

Mr. FORD. That is correct.

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

Mr. FORD. Madam President, am I correct that 5 minutes is now running on the debate on the Harkin amendment with 2\1/2\ minutes equally divided?

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, without the Senator losing his right to the floor, I would like to ask him another question.

Mr. FORD. It reminds me of the military, the teeth and the tail. I believe the teeth here have been pulled.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. And, second, if we agree to this and the second-degree amendment is defeated, then I am precluded from offering another amendment in the second degree.

Mr. FORD. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.

Mr. FORD. I think I am getting to the point here where I don't like this agreement, and, I say with all respect, of what we are trying to do. One, if this agreement is accepted, then as I understand it--and I am not as good at the rules as I used to be or should be--but this precludes a tabling motion on the underlying amendment if we agree to this.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. This is just tobacco.

Mr. FORD. Administration of the program.

Mr. FORD. What about the $77 million that went to the hurricanes in North and South Carolina and Virginia that was paid and helped the communities or they would have taken the money out of some other fund as it relates to disasters?

Mr. FORD. I am sure he will be able to answer this and make me look bad. But this is just on crop insurance.

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

Mr. FORD. And there will not be for a while. Mr. President, there is a lot of tobacco bashing going on and I understand that better than anybody in this Chamber. An agreement that has been negotiated--and my good friend from Illinois, even though we disagree on this, we are friends, understands--that negotiation is continuing and we will be called upon to make the ultimate decision as to whether that negotiated package will fly, will be passed, worked out, whatever. Many parts of that negotiated agreement take care of everything that has been said by my two colleagues, except the farmer. The farmer was never at the table. You say you will hear a lot about protecting farmers, the little farm. You are darn right; you will hear a lot about it. They were not at the table, they were not considered, and so therefore, here we come, bashing the farmer again. You say it is a lucrative crop. Well, let's look at something here. Kentucky's average farm size is 159 acres. The average farm size of Illinois is 370--that is the difference. Kentucky's average gross income per farm is $42,000 and the net to that farm is $11,000. The Illinois average gross income per farm is $128,000, three times what Kentucky's average farm income is, and their gross profit is more than double, $25,000 net profit. That is an Illinois farm compared to a Kentucky farm. We talk about the gross net profit from one crop which is about an acre, 1 acre, you get $1,800. But the farmer has to be considered. The package has not. I am trying to figure out a way that I can be flat so when the steamroller comes, it won't hurt. But it is another attack on the tobacco farmer, even though there is no tobacco subsidy--no tobacco subsidy, and I underscore that. Tobacco farmers participate--and my friend from Illinois said it-- participate in a price support system that is completely paid for. In fact, tobacco farmers are unique in that they actually contribute millions of dollars each year toward deficit reduction--$31 million last year. There is not another crop or another farmer that is assessed to pay money into the general fund for deficit reduction. Last year, the tobacco farmer alone paid over $31 million. I hear your loss is only 34--maybe it is only 3, because the farmer is paying almost all of that in an assessment for every pound he sells, and that is deducted from his check before he gets it, before he goes to the bank to pay his loan. Crop insurance is not a subsidy. It is not a subsidy. It is not unique to tobacco. The Durbin amendment does not hit the tobacco companies. We hear all about the health. This amendment will not stop one person from smoking. What it will do is ensure that tobacco farmers will slowly but surely go out of business. That is what they want. Tobacco is a culture and it will take a while. Before we became a nation, if you want to read history, it said that Mr. Jones came for his spring planting, his seed for his spring planting, and he paid for it with some of the finest tobacco I have ever seen. Tobacco was money. Referring to the Mother State, Virginia, the pages of Virginia history are splattered with tobacco juice. So tobacco has been here for a long, long time. Over 60 percent, Mr. President, of every acre farmed in the United States is covered by crop insurance, and the number is higher for individual crops. Corn: 85 percent of every acre is covered by crop insurance. Sugar beets: 89 percent of every acre grown is covered. Wheat: 90 percent of every acre grown is covered by crop insurance. Cotton: 94 percent is covered by crop insurance. Farmers will tell you what tobacco farmers know--all of these farmers will. Without crop insurance, there is no farm. That is because without crop insurance, banks will not make loans to growers for their farming operations. Farmers in my State do not just borrow money to grow tobacco, they borrow money to grow other crops. Their average income is $25,000, and their net profit is $11,000. But they would not have that if they could not get the crop insurance to lay down to the banker to support the loan. No legitimate lender--and I say that, legitimate lender--will take the risk of lending to an uninsured operation. You cannot even borrow money on a house without an insurance policy, and there will not be a private-sector substitute for crop insurance, either. Talk about private sector. One of the reasons the USDA extends crop insurance to a particular crop is because a private-sector alternative does not exist. You say, ``Go out and get insurance.'' Well, you can't go out and get it; it doesn't exist. You can get hail insurance on tobacco at 7 percent of the loss. That is all you get from private carriers. I used to do it, I understand it. This is what the American Association of Crop Insurers say: Privately, underwriting multiple peril insurance has been tried in the past and it has failed miserably. This is true for tobacco, as well. Hail, the only peril wholly privately underwritten, accounts for less than 7 percent of crop losses in tobacco-growing States. The private sector would be incapable of insuring the remaining 93 percent risk of loss on a multiple peril universal base without some form of catastrophic reinsurance from the Government, but while there is no farm without crop insurance, discriminating against tobacco farmers won't do anything to reduce tobacco use. Won't do anything to reduce tobacco use. Crop insurance doesn't promote increased use of tobacco any more than automobile insurance promotes an increase in car sales. The bottom line of the Durbin amendment is this: American farmers go out of business and whole communities in the South die. The big tobacco companies continue to make and sell cigarettes. While communities die, the manufacturers continue to make and sell cigarettes. If we are going to talk about making changes to the crop insurance system, it should not target the family farmer. Before we get through, I will have a second-degree amendment to the amendment of the Senator from Illinois. My second-degree amendment would reform the crop insurance to make sure it supports family farms, not corporate farms. Let me repeat that. My second-degree amendment would reform the crop insurance to make sure it supports family farmers, not corporate farms. I'm prepared to fight this battle. If we are going to be changing crop insurance, I am prepared to offer second- degree after second-degree to make sure the changes are comprehensive and don't single out a commodity or a single type of farmer, because that is what the Durbin amendment does: It singles out one commodity grown in one part of the country by one type of farmer, a small family farmer. Now, Mr. President, we just heard my friend from Illinois talk about the loss from tobacco insurance. Well, stand back. Here are all the losses from other crops. Wheat, since 1984, $288.7 million lost to the Federal Government--a subsidy to wheat farmers. I don't believe you would vote today to do away with crop insurance for the wheat farmer, because you say it is health. Well, everything Kentucky farmers or North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, or Tennessee farmers grow-- even Wisconsin farmers grow tobacco--they get insurance. But they borrow money and insure other crops. Think about almonds. That was the very first one the Senator said--almonds. Almost $50 million in loss to the Federal Government. That is a lot more than tobacco. We could go down the list. Grain sorghum. I don't know where grain sorghum comes from--maybe from Illinois, maybe Wyoming, I don't know. But they lost $36.1 million. So we can get into even sunflowers lost, which is $22 million. These are losses to other crops, and my friend would not vote to reduce the loss on wheat or almonds or barley or grain sorghum or these others, but he would on tobacco because he says tobacco is dangerous. I am trying to help. I am trying to work out a package. I am trying to help negotiate. I have listened in every meeting. I have been to every meeting and we even had one group yesterday that the only thing they want in the negotiated agreement is some way to eliminate the addiction. That is fine. The biggest argument in the tobacco negotiated package will be what percentage of that package the trial lawyers are going to get. That will be most contentious. It is not in there. That is to be negotiated yet. The result of this elimination of the ability to secure crop insurance will be devastating to the farmers in my area. Yet, this is not the biggest loss to agriculture crop insurance. Mr. President, I have a letter from the Department of Agriculture addressed to Senator Thad Cochran, chairman of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations, and I read just a couple of items. There were 89,000 tobacco growers-- 89,000 tobacco growers--with crop insurance policies in 1996. Tobacco growers in three States--North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia-- received $77.8 million in indemnities for losses due to back-to-back hurricanes that hit the east coast last year. These funds helped communities recover from disaster and were paid for in part by the producers themselves. The significance of a program that encourages producers to assess their individual risk management needs and allows them to pay part of a cost for coverage must not be lost at a time when fewer dollars--fewer dollars--are available for other types of assistance. Elimination of tobacco crop insurance would place a greater burden on other sources of relief. So when you take it away from one place, you place the burden on other sources in case of a hurricane or tornado or flood. But if you have insurance, that lifts the burden from these other areas that hasn't been offset in your figure here yet. The $77 million paid last year in three States hasn't been offset from the $34 million. So it makes a little bit of difference, I think, when you look at it in the true light. This idea of me crying crocodile tears for the small farmer, if that's what it takes, I will give you 30 minutes to draw a crowd to stop this amendment. This amendment is absolutely no different and the speech is no different than it was in 1992 or 1993 or 1994, or whenever it was. So, Mr. President, I hope my colleagues will understand that, yes, we grow tobacco in Kentucky, yes, we grow a little corn, a little soybeans, a little wheat. We do the things that other small farmers do. I want you to remember that the farms in Illinois are almost three times as large as my average farm, and the net income to the farmer in the State of Illinois is more than twice what my farmers' net income would be. Yet, they do grow tobacco. So, Mr. President, I am going to yield the floor soon so my colleague from Kentucky can have some time. But I want to make one final point. The distinguished Senator from Illinois said that all these other crops are not covered. I think about 1,600, something like that. First, they haven't petitioned the Federal Government for it. They haven't asked to participate. A lot of them have private insurance. So you have to be in a position of requesting it before the Government will consider it. I don't believe they have petitioned. So it's a little bit unusual. We don't get anything in tobacco as it relates to the farm bill--not a dime. Corn gets crop insurance, and we have lost over $288 million. Yet, they get a check every year as a subsidy. They don't even have to grow it. That is what we call back in Kentucky a mailbox job. Just go out to the mailbox and get your check. Everybody lost that. So for every acre that they have and they signed up, they get a check every year for so much per acre, whether they grow it or not. The tobacco farmer doesn't get that. So there is a bit of fairness here, I think, that ought to be given. As we work through the problems of the tobacco industry, we need to be sure that we understand that those who grow tobacco are just as human, just as religious, just as American, just as needy, just as hard working as the farmers that grow wheat or corn or granola or whatever. They are good Americans. I can take you anywhere in my State, in any town where we have a circle with a courthouse. Usually, on that courthouse is a monument of some kind to those tobacco farmers who gave their lives for this country in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. So, let's try to work through this and understand that the people I represent have no control, basically, over what we are doing here. We are after the manufacturers, but we are getting at the farmer. Somehow, some way, we ought not make a farmer in my State who will net $1,800 off of an acre, which is labor intensive, to $4,000, and about half of that is expense. There is not as much work in corn, soybeans, or others. The weather works on all of them. But my people are just as hard working, just as sincere and, I think, need to be helped and looked after just as anybody else. This amendment, according to the Secretary of Agriculture, would have a particular detrimental effect on thousands of small farmers in tobacco-producing States, not to mention the toll it would take on the economic stability of many rural communities. Just let me read that one sentence again. This amendment would have a particularly detrimental effect on thousands of small farmers in tobacco-producing States, not to mention the toll it would take on the economic stability of many rural communities. An overwhelming majority of crop insurance policies in this area are sold to small farmers. It seems to me, rather than to cut the cord of economic stability on the farmer to get after something else, we ought to be sure that that farmer has an opportunity, and we will get around to others. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Is the money in the premiums in your figures here paid by the farmer--deducted, and this is the net?

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, what I have done here, as I said earlier, is to try to make crop insurance more comprehensive. So what this does is, it says that any farm with more than 400 acres that can be farmed not be eligible for crop insurance. The idea here is to let the corporate farmers pay for themselves, and try to protect the small farmer. So I think that this amendment will make it fairer. It protects the small farmers. The corporate farmers, then, the big farmers, those over 400 acres of land that can be farmed--by the way, this does nothing out West as far as grazing land. It doesn't touch that part of it at all. It is land that can be farmed. I yield the floor. Mr. DURBIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, there is no time agreement on this amendment, as I understand it.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Rob Mangas and Jim Low of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of S. 1033.