Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I will gladly yield to my colleague from California on the Rules Committee for a question. Did we waive the PAYGO rules in this rule?

Mr. FLAKE. Reading from the House rules after the beginning of a new calendar year----

Mr. FLAKE. The gentleman mentioned the National Marine Fishery Service earmark. It was added at the last minute. It may have been in a 2006 bill, but it wasn't in this bill until it was air dropped into the conference report. Now $170 million, that may well be a disaster there, but why in the world, if it is a disaster, why isn't it covered?

Mr. FLAKE. I can well understand why the other side does not want to talk about PAYGO and why I should confine this debate to unfunded mandates because PAYGO was, in fact, waived here. PAYGO was waived. And were it not waived, it would be subject to a point of order, the same point of order that the gentleman is lodging against this debate right now. So I can understand that. And I guess we will have to go with the flow. There is another point of order that will be raised shortly with regard to the waiver of the earmark rules that we have in place as well. So let me get back. This is an unfunded mandate on the taxpayers, of course. According to the Environmental Working Group, the Federal Government handed out $13.4 billion in farm subsidies to 1.4 million recipients, $11.2 billion of which related to various commodity support programs, programs that the underlying bill simply does not change. The taxpayers have a huge unfunded mandate here that we are going to be paying off for a very, very long time. With that I will gladly yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. FLAKE. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for the clarification. I still would point out we have a $3.8 billion permanent disaster title added to the bill; and still, in addition to that, we are funding these kinds of programs directly and specifically. The gentleman can argue that it is not an earmark. I think that a casual or a tortured reading of this would both say this is an earmark when you are naming a specific entity to receive a specific amount of money and when it wasn't in the House bill, that is an earmark. So there is a good reason for this point of order. The gentleman said, and let me go back to the PAYGO issue. The gentleman mentioned that this rule he thinks is in compliance with PAYGO. Let me read what this conference report says and see if anybody can decipher this.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the other side. You notice the words used, that we have graciously agreed to give them. Under the rules, the House rules, those who are opposed to the bill are required to be given the chance to claim time in opposition, not to be at the whims and graciousness of those who support the legislation. That's why we have rules, and that's why in this case the rules have been waived. I understand completely if I had waived the PAYGO rules, when so many on that side of the aisle, bless their hearts, have been diligent sometimes on raising the issue of PAYGO and saying we shouldn't violate it, if I had violated PAYGO and waived it like this, I would want to waive every rule as well and stifle all the debate I could because it is embarrassing, frankly. I don't have time to yield. I would just say in my remaining 15 seconds, we have a bill that deserves a lot more debate than it is getting. This is important legislation. We are waiving PAYGO rules, and let me just say what this rule says: Therefore, while there is a technical violation of clause 10 of rule XXI, the conference report complies with the rule. It says there is a technical violation, but we have complied. It simply doesn't make sense. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. If I might respond, the gentleman, after he raised his last point of order went on to talk about the reforms in the bill which clearly didn't have anything to do with the unfunded mandates language that I had raised or that I had talked about or that he had raised a point of order for. Clearly, I understand that they don't want to talk about this. I understand that. That's why the rules are waived. But to stand now and to raise a point of order against my point of order because I am not addressing specifically the question that they want to address or that they would rather dispose of is, I think, a little spurious. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic that we are being accused on this side of trying to stifle debate on the bill, that we don't want debate on the bill when I am here to argue against a rule that waives these points of order and a rule that also does not allow opposition to claim time. Now, the majority will say, well, we will yield you time now. Now that we have been caught on this, we will yield you some time. That's not the same as controlling time. When I control time, I can yield time to my colleagues. If I am yielded time, I can't do that. I don't control time in opposition. Our House Rules say that if both the majority and the minority are in favor of the bill for the leadership, that somebody opposed to the bill has a right to claim time in opposition. That was not done here. With a bill this important, you wonder why that has happened. Back to the earmarks, the gentleman mentioned that there is a list of earmarks that was listed, it's right here, a number of them. Now why in the world we had to have more than a dozen earmarks airdropped into a bill that has been under consideration for the past 2 years, I simply don't know. But when you read some of them, you kind of wonder why, like I said, Housing Assistance Council, Sun Grant Insular Pacific Sub-Center, Desert Terminal Lakes, Nevada. This is all we know about them. If you dig into them, you might find something untoward, you might not, but the fact is we don't have time to do that. That's why we have earmark rules that give us time to actually vet them. Those rules are being waived here, and we should not be doing that. Let me mention also, the gentleman said they are all listed. They aren't. There is quite a controversial earmark in this legislation that does not show up on the list. It's a $250 million tax refund to the Plum Tree Timber Company. Now, this is an earmark that allows the Nature Conservancy to purchase that from the Plum Tree Timber Company. Now, the Plum Tree Timber Company, as I understand, is not mentioned in the legislation, it is simply described. It would be like saying I am going to give a subsidy to the gentleman who stands 6-feet tall, weighs 175 pounds, has blue eyes and his middle name is John, but we won't say the rest of it. That's exactly what we are doing here. In an effort to get around the scrutiny that might come if somebody actually said now why is a subsidy actually going to the Plum Tree Timber Company. It is no wonder that the rules have been waived here. If I had something like this in this bill, I would waive the rules too, because I wouldn't want anybody to talk about it. I would also not want anybody who is opposed to the bill to claim time in opposition to it. If I were sponsoring this legislation that I said reformed the farm subsidy program to make sure that multimillionaire farmers don't continue to get subsidies on behalf of the taxpayer, I would hide it as well. I would do exactly what the Rules Committee has done here and the supporters of the legislation have done. Because under this legislation, a farm couple earning as much as $2.5 million in adjusted gross income, that's your income after expenses are taken out, can still receive direct payments under this legislation. Also, the other subsidy programs, rather than reform or to get rid of the loopholes that were allowing people to get extra subsidies, we simply waive the limits there. This is called reform? I mean, is it any wonder that the rules have been waived and debate has been stifled here on this critical legislation? Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, this second point of order, and I will be calling for a vote on this one, is raised because of earmarks that have been airdropped into the legislation. As the gentleman mentioned, this is not a new bill. This is not something that just popped up last week and that there was a need to add $1 million for the National Sheep and Goat Industry Improvement Center, but that was something that had to come up at midnight and be dropped in when nobody had seen it in either the House or the Senate. This bill has been under consideration for a long, long time, and yet, still, we have earmarks that have been airdropped into the legislation, a number of them. Now, the gentleman may say in defense, we have listed the earmarks that have been airdropped in. It is true that some have been listed. If all of them were listed, why would we waive all points of order against the bill? If the majority was confident enough that all earmarks have been listed, then we wouldn't have waived the points of order against it. I will speak specifically about a few of these earmarks. But let me just mention some of them that are in the bill. There is authorization language for a National Products Research Laboratory. Again, this was airdropped in at the last minute when it hadn't been in the House version of the bill, hadn't been in the Senate, it was airdropped into the conference report. There is authorization language for a Policy Research Center, authorization language for Housing Assistance Council. Now, what that has to do with the farm bill, I am not sure, and the problem is, we will never know until the bill was passed because it was airdropped in at the last minute. That's the problem that the majority party correctly identified when they took control of this body, that we have a problem with earmarks, and they are being dropped in at the last minute without notice. That's why decent rules were actually put in place to try to curb this abuse. The problem is, in this rule, we are waiving those rules. We are waiving those rules so the old practice can continue on just like it always has. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, we've detailed many of the problems with this rule, one of the worst aspects of which is that, as has been mentioned, it allows a bit of time travel here for the purpose of going back and choosing another baseline that allows you to actually comply with PAYGO rules. That should not be allowed under the rule, and that's why the PAYGO rules are actually waived in this bill. For all the talk on the other side about PAYGO compliance, if this bill was PAYGO compliant, the PAYGO rule would not have been waived. The same goes with earmarks. More than a dozen earmarks were added, airdropped into the bill; yet we still have a waiver because we know there are likely other earmarks added in the bill as well. So we want to protect against that. Also, I mentioned about the rule. It stifles debate. I don't know of another example where a conference report has come to the floor, particularly one of this magnitude, where those who are opposed to the bill have not been given the opportunity to claim time in opposition. Instead, we have to rely on the good graces of those who support the bill to actually be yielded time to actually speak in opposition to the bill. Finally, Mr. Speaker, we have a real problem in this country in terms of entitlements. We're going to have to reform Social Security and Medicare. Tell me how, tell me why anybody out there, outside of the beltway, should believe that we are capable of doing that kind of reform when we can't tell a farm couple making up to $2.5 million in adjusted gross income every year, that's income after expenses, if we can't tell them that the subsidy party is over? How are we ever going to reform entitlements? I asked that of my party; I ask that of the Democrats. How in the world can anybody take us seriously here if we can't have a farm bill that reforms the subsidy program?

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I didn't plan to take any time today, but we will be debating the farm bill later today, and the rule that has come to the floor does not allow anyone to claim time in opposition to the bill; so those of us who are opposed to this $300 billion piece of legislation cannot even stand up and oppose the bill unless we get time, if they are generous enough to give it to us, from those who support the bill. Now, if I were wanting to hide what's in this bill, that's what I would do too. This legislation allows multimillionaires to still collect farm subsidies. Under this legislation you can still make $2.5 million as a couple in farm and nonfarm income and still collect subsidies. I would have a closed rule or a highly structured rule as well if I had this in a bill and wanted to hide it. This bill needs to be rejected today. I hope we will all vote against the farm bill.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I yield myself 1 minute. We have mentioned the generous subsidies that still flow to multimillionaire farmers. Let me just put that in perspective in this legislation. With this legislation, a farm couple earning $2.5 million in combined on-farm and off-farm income is still eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm payments. Yet an urban couple earning a little more than $17,800 or owning more than one vehicle can become ineligible for food stamp benefits. Now I am not making an argument that we should raise the threshold for food stamp benefits. But look at the difference here. How in the world can you justify having a farm couple with on-farm and off-farm income of $2.5 million still eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidies? It is simply indefensible. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I yield 1 minute to the minority leader, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I will yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Hulshof).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, in my very short time remaining, let me simply say that we have a huge problem with entitlements in this country, one of which is the entitlement, direct payment system for farmers. This is not serious reform, when you are still paying farmers that make up to $2.5 million in subsidies from the taxpayer. I urge a ``no'' vote on the bill.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, sometimes here in Washington, we tend to drink our own bath water and believe our own press releases. And to hear some of the debate here, you would think this is the best bill in the world and that everybody out there has got to support it. Let me just read a couple of editorials from around the country to give you an idea of how this bill is being played outside of Washington: The Columbus Dispatch: ``The current compromise version of the farm bill includes little retreat from the subsidy program that for decades has bled taxpayers, fattened the already fat, distorted market incentives, soured U.S. trade, hurt the environment, and done little for family farmers.'' The San Francisco Chronicle: ``From the fiscal watchdog perspective, this bill is a sign that the new Democratic leadership is as profligate as the Republican leadership it replaced. Make that more profligate . . . The $286 billion farm bill is good politics only because the millions of taxpayers who are paying the bill are not pushing as hard as the relatively few who benefit.'' The Albany Times: ``Corn prices are up. Same for flour. That means farmers are enjoying boom times . . . So why would Congress even think of giving more generous subsidies?'' That's a good question. The Spartanburg Herald-Journal: `` . . . The fact that reform has failed, and Congress is about to pass a renewal of the same failed, wasteful subsidies, is a testament to all that's wrong with politics in Washington . . . Congress has reached a House/Senate compromise bill that will continue to take money from you and other families struggling with high food prices to further enrich big corporate farmers who are already earning record prices for their crops.'' The Dallas Morning News: ``The legislators negotiating the new farm bill evidently don't do their own grocery shopping. Otherwise, they'd have seen the dramatic rise in food prices. And they'd have done more than trim only $400 million from the $26 billion in direct-payment subsidies they're planning for farmers . . .'' We can do a lot better than this. I want to associate myself with the comments of Mr. Kind from Wisconsin. Taxpayers expect more. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, tomorrow we're going to be voting on a very important piece of legislation. This is the farm bill, something that we reauthorize every 5 years or so, and I would have hoped that we could have a good debate tomorrow. But I just learned a few minutes ago that the bill will come to the floor under a structured rule which will not allow anybody opposed to the bill to claim time in opposition. So, if you can believe this, this is one of the most expensive, most important pieces of legislation to come before this body in years, and it will come to the floor under a structured rule that does not allow those opposed to the rule to claim time in opposition. This is a bill that the President has said that he will veto. This is a bill that has opposition. But those who favor this farm bill do not want those who oppose the bill to be heard. Imagine that. There is time under the rule, as with any bill that comes to the floor, for what's called general debate. If you can think of this, general debate tomorrow will mean that time will simply be split between the majority party, which favors the bill, and those on the minority party who also favor the bill. If you oppose the bill, you cannot claim time in opposition, and you must go and get time, which you may or may not be able to get from your respective party officials or those who are controlling the time. That is simply wrong. We shouldn't run the House this way, under Republicans or Democrats. A bill of this importance should be debated, should be debated fully. Let me explain a few parts of the bill that I think led to the decision to make this a structured rule where those opposed to the bill cannot claim time in opposition. We have said we had heard that we were going to have some reform in this farm bill. Those who are on farms making millions of dollars on farms in the past have been able to claim massive subsidies. We were told that this was going to change. In fact, what the President said is that we should have a limit of $200,000 adjusted gross income, or AGI. Anything above that and you should not be able to receive subsidies. That sounds reasonable. But instead, in this piece of legislation, you can make in farm income $750,000 in adjusted gross income. As an individual, a single farmer can make that. Remember, that's adjusted gross income. That's your income minus expenses. That's after all expenses are taken out. You can still make as a single farmer $750,000 and receive subsidies. If you're married and you structure it properly, your spouse can also make $750,000. That means you can have adjusted gross income as a couple of $1.5 million and still receive thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidy payments from your government. What's more, if you're a farmer and the farmer's spouse making up to $1.5 million in adjusted gross income, if you have non-farm income, that can amount to $500,000 in addition, and then if your spouse has non-farm income, that's another $500,000. So you can have a couple making $2.5 million in adjusted gross income. Again, adjusted gross income is your income minus your expenses. People will point out farming's an expensive venture. There are a lot of expenses, but those are taken out, and you can still have adjusted gross income of $2.5 million and collect subsidies under this bill. Is it any wonder that those who favor this farm bill didn't want anybody to be able to claim time in opposition to the bill tomorrow when we debate it? A few other things that should be discussed here. I should mention that over the past couple of years, since we passed the last farm bill, farm incomes have shattered all kinds of records. We have net farm income that will reach $92.3 billion in 2008. That's a 56 percent increase over 2006. Average household farm income significantly exceeds the national average. In fact, average household income for farmers is $89,434. Why do we have these kind of subsidies for those who are far better off than the average American? It simply doesn't make sense. There are also some pretty severe budget gimmicks in this bill to make it look like it's coming in under budget when it really isn't. The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, identified numerous gimmicks in both the House and the Senate versions of the bill that, for example, they shift costs outside the 10-year window and unrealistically assume that some of these programs will be ended in 5 years, and we know that they won't, just to fit them under the budget window. Also under this legislation, for the first time that I've seen this, those writing the bill were able to go baseline shopping where you basically say I don't like this year's baseline funding or baseline limit so I'm going to go off last year's baseline limit; that will allow me to spend more. It's like if I were filling out my taxes and I said, well, you know, I could pay less if I claimed last year's income instead of this year's and I would be able to choose that. That's what the sponsors of this legislation have done. They've shopped for a cheaper baseline so they could fit more spending. That gimmick should be exposed, and it's no wonder they didn't want anybody to claim time in opposition. Madam Speaker, I don't know how anybody in America thinks that we're going to be serious enough to address the entitlement problem we have in this country with Social Security and Medicare if we can't say no to millionaire farmers. How will we ever address entitlements if we can't say no to millionaire farmers?

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, many of us in this body have realized for quite a while that the practice of earmarking is out of control. When we herald the fact that we had a mere 12,000 earmarks last year, as opposed to only 15,000 a couple of years ago, we know that something is wrong. But the exercise we went through last week was perhaps the best indication we had yet that we still have a long way to go. We authorized the Justice Department to investigate the origin of an immaculate earmark, an earmark that wasn't in either the House or Senate version of the bill, that only showed up when the President signed the legislation. The earmark was not in either the House or Senate version. Now, one would think that the discovery of an immaculate earmark would prompt an immediate congressional investigation. Instead, we waited 2 years and then authorized the Justice Department to look into it. Mr. Speaker, we owe this great institution far better than we're giving it, from bridges to nowhere to teapot museums, to immaculate earmarks that we don't even pass, let alone scrutinize. We can do far better than this.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. The gentleman from Massachusetts knows the respect I have for his knowledge of free market economics. He often scolds us on this side of the aisle when our rhetoric doesn't match our actions. And he is often justified in doing so. I have heard him quote Adam Smith and Milton Friedman with the best of them. That is why I was baffled to see this bill come to the floor from his committee, a bill that violates the same principles that he has chastened us for not recognizing. He was right then. And he is inconsistent and wrong today. This bill has ``moral hazard'' written all over it. We know that a party insulated from risk behaves differently than a party that is fully exposed to risk. The truth is here we are insulating home buyers and home owners from risk. And we will simply prolong the housing crisis by doing so. Let's be real here. The purpose of this legislation is to insulate political parties from risk. That is what we are doing here. If we felt such a need to intervene here, we ought to remember what we did last September when I believe, if I remember right, we encouraged FHA to give no-money-down loans. Why is it that we think that we are so prescient here about what is going to happen? We can't outguess the market. We shouldn't try to. We simply will delay the bottom and delay and increase the dislocations that will occur when its politicians decide to allocate resources and capital rather than the markets.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, this motion to instruct conferees is simple. It would urge the farm bill conferees to not include a new permanent disaster program contained in the Senate-passed farm bill. The Senate-passed farm bill included a new and permanent disaster program which has been estimated to cost an additional $5.1 billion. First of all, I want to commend the House for not including the disaster title. It is not needed. We end up paying far more than we should in the regular subsidy programs; but to add a permanent disaster title is simply heaping too much on the taxpayers. As I go through some of this, you will see why. According to the Congressional Research Service, since 1989 Congress has passed 35 appropriations authorizations or farm disaster acts that have added more than $60 billion in supplemental funding to USDA programs with just under 8 percent of that coming in the last 10 years. An analysis by the Environmental Working Group showed the Federal Government provided $26 billion in disaster relief payments between 1985 and 2005. Congress spent more than $8 billion in disaster payments between 2002 and 2006, with an additional $3.4 billion being made available for the 2008 omnibus for disaster payments for losses between 2005 and 2007. So you see, we have regular subsidy programs that are awfully big, and then we are being asked to add a disaster title on top of that. When we debated the bill in 2002, the 2002 farm bill, the idea was to stop the expensive disaster assistance payments. Former Senator Daschle said at that time: ``We are getting rid of these ad hoc disaster payments approaches. We are actually bringing down the cost of the Federal program.'' So in essence we were basically including permanent disaster relief within the farm program in 2002. Or that is what was said at the time. And now we are being asked again, let's add another disaster title because we simply aren't subsidizing enough. Representative Lucas of Oklahoma said during that debate: ``On the committee, both Republicans and Democrats worked to find a balanced bill so we would not have to come back to Congress and ask for ad hoc disaster bills year after year. We have found that balance in the manager's amendment.'' Again, that was in 2002. We were told if we passed the bill in 2002, we wouldn't have to come back again and again for disaster payments. But guess what, we were back the next year and the next year and the next year with disaster payments; and we are being asked again here to include a permanent disaster title. Now believe me, if we do this, next year we will be asked to add disaster payments again and the next year again and again. This is nothing more than an effort to increase the baseline, to increase more subsidies going out to farmers. Representative Pomeroy said in 2002: ``There is a better way to go than to add ad hoc year-to-year disaster bills that leave the farmer and their lenders and their creditors not knowing where they stand. The better way is to put it in the farm bill, just like this bill does.'' Let me remind you, that bill was passed. We did exactly what these Members said we should do in order to avoid ad hoc disaster payments henceforth. Guess what, we didn't. We have seen those payments again and again. Now we are being asked to include a permanent disaster title, only to see these payments again and again. It is simply too much. When do we stand up and say enough is enough? The taxpayer is on the hook for too much. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I will reserve.

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I would yield 15 seconds. The question I had asked before of the gentleman is why didn't the House include the disaster.