Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object, I would say to my friend from Alaska that the precipitating cause of why we are here was the insistence of OMB, I am sure with the concurrence of the White House, and with the acceptance by the majority party on the Appropriations Committee, to fundamentally change an authorized bill in the Agriculture Committee under purview of the Agriculture Committee that would treat those who were hurt by the hurricane differently than farmers would be compensated in Iowa or Ohio or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or a number of other States. And so it is not fair--

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first of all, I would like to respond to the Senator from Alaska who said this bill would not affect the program because it took funds out of the outyears. That is not true because this is a contractual program. Farmers have to sign 5- to 10-year contracts. If you take money out of the outyears, of course, that affects how the programs operate today, the ability of USDA to sign 5- to 10-year contracts today. The Senator also said he did not know of any other program like this, which is a mandatory program without a fixed spending limit. I am sorry, but there are a lot of programs like that in our agriculture committee. The programs are like that. I see our chairman sitting here. The commodity programs are exactly like that. Apart from agriculture there are a lot of programs that operate that way. I will respond to my friend from Pennsylvania. Regarding getting money out, I will point out that my friend from Pennsylvania said there are not too many offices open in Pennsylvania today. I also point out that he may have forgotten that Columbus Day is a national holiday, and I don't think there will be many offices open in Pennsylvania that day either. The Senator from Pennsylvania went on with quite inflammatory-type language about getting these bills done. I will point out that the MILCON bill passed the Senate on September 20. I never heard--maybe I missed it--the Senator from Pennsylvania speak so heatedly after September 20 about the necessity of getting this bill done. It has been out of here since September 20. Yet I only heard him talking about the necessity of passing it today. I never heard about it before. This is all politics. That is all it is. I point out that homeland security passed September 14. I have not heard the Senator from Pennsylvania complaining before about how we need to get the House to act and get that done in a hurry. I had not heard it until today. It is just politics. We all know that. Again, I am somewhat surprised that the Senator from Pennsylvania is willing to take money out of the pockets of Pennsylvania farmers and use that money to pay for farmers in Texas or Colorado or Wyoming or Montana. He is willing to do that. I will point out again that the Senator talked about going back to appropriations to get funds for conservation back later. But we passed this conservation program in the farm bill, not in appropriations. I also point out to the Senator from Pennsylvania that just yesterday, on a resolution that was before this body, 71 Senators voted affirmatively that this disaster money ought to be emergency spending and not offset out of farm programs. Mr. President, 71 Senators voted yes; 14 voted no. I guess it comes as no surprise that the Senator from Pennsylvania was 1 of the 14 who voted no. So he is in favor of taking money out of the farm program to pay for disasters. Surprise, surprise. Maybe it is not a surprise for some. But I point out that Pennsylvania, the State he represents, is in the hurricane assistance package. They get the hurricane assistance without having an offset, along with Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, and a few other States. One can be selfish about things and one can look upon disaster assistance as a national priority. I note that a number of Senators from other States that were affected by the hurricane voted the other way. The Senators from Virginia, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, to cite some, all basically voted to say: Yes, we are happy that the hurricane money comes to us. But you are right, other disaster money ought to be emergency. But not the Senator from Pennsylvania. He voted to take it out of the farm program himself. I wish he would follow the lead of some other Senators who are affected by hurricanes in other States. They said unselfishly: Yes, we need help. I believe they do, too, and it ought to be an emergency. But I also believe that farmers who suffered from drought or flooding in Iowa, floods in North Dakota, suffered from tornadoes in Oklahoma, hail in Minnesota, wind damage in Wisconsin, pest infestation in Pennsylvania, they too suffered a disaster. That ought to be taken out of emergency spending just as we have done for the last 50 years, with one exception 2 years ago. That was corrected right away. The Senator from Pennsylvania stands in a small minority who believe that disaster money ought to be taken out of the farm program. The Senator from Pennsylvania went on talking about how much money this conservation program costs. He said it will cost four and one-half times what it was supposed to. That is a guesstimate. We really do not know exactly and for certain what it is going to cost, and I don't think it is going to cost that much. But, nonetheless, he went on about this program. I will check the record. I could be wrong in my interpretation. But I believe he said we should not have programs like that, that we ought to come back and get appropriations for them. I just wonder. Of course, the Senator from Pennsylvania is no longer in the Chamber, but I am sure someone will tell him what I said. I would like to ask the Senator from Pennsylvania whether he wants the same rules to apply to the milk income loss program. Would the Senator from Pennsylvania like the same rules he is trying to put on the conservation program to apply to the milk income loss program? I bet he wouldn't because that affects his dairy farmers in Pennsylvania. We put the milk income loss program in the farm bill. It was estimated to cost $1.7 billion through fiscal 2005. Later, CBO said it would cost more than $4 billion. Already it has cost $2 billion. I don't hear the Senator from Pennsylvania griping about that and saying that is not right, that if it was supposed to have cost $1.7 billion, that is where we should have capped it. But the milk loss program will be coming back and we will see if the Senator from Pennsylvania would like to apply the same rules to that. In fact, the Senator from Pennsylvania wants to extend the milk loss program. He does not want to just let it expire but wants to extend it. He does not care how much it costs because it is uncapped. It is another one of those uncapped entitlement programs, I point out to the Senator from Alaska, that is paid for by the taxpayers of this country. There is no cap on that program. It is an entitlement program paid for by the taxpayers. Again, I point that out to the Senator from Pennsylvania, maybe he would like to go in there and get some money from that program. I will talk about the conservation program for a few minutes. The Senator from Pennsylvania said what gives us a bad name around here--I don't remember all that he said--is the procedure of the Senate , like this afternoon. What gives us a bad name is when we agree to do something, enact it, and our constituents rely upon that, and then we come back later and a few people, exercising their power, run roughshod over the will of the majority and change the program we had promised to the people, We have enacted this program for you. In the farm bill, we fought out these issues. We hammered them out and made agreements and we created this Conservation Security Program. Our constituency--farmers, conservationists and environmentalists and others around the country--were told, OK, you can rely on these 5- to 1-year contracts. Now a few people have come back to thwart the will of the majority. As I pointed out, 71 Senators voted against taking an offset for disaster assistance, not to take it out of conservation. That is overwhelming. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly supported this program, but OMB, under the guidance of the White House, and with the concurrence of a few people in the House leadership and Appropriations Committee, were able to change it. That is what gives us a bad name around here, that a few people can thwart the will of the majority and change those programs. Again, this is a program that was historic, the whole conservation title of the farm bill. When the President of the United States signed the farm bill in May of 2002, he said one of the main reasons he was signing it was because of the historic increase in conservation, an 80- percent increase. We had a lot of programs in there for conservation, and we had a new program called the Conservation Security Program. Everyone said good things about it, including the President. Unlike other conservation programs, the Conservation Security Program took a comprehensive approach to conservation. It not only encourages the adoption of new practices, it rewards those who are already implementing important resource-conserving practices. CSP, as it has come to be known, the Conservation Security Program, was designed specifically as an open national program, equivalent to the commodity programs except instead of being paid in relation to farm commodity production, farmers and ranchers are now going to be paid for producing environmental benefits such as cleaner air, cleaner water, saving soil, enhanced wildlife habitat, and the adoption of energy- conserving practices. The CSP is also clearly a way to provide all producers across the Nation the tools and opportunity to implement conservation practices and to lessen the need for environmental regulations. It also provides incentives for producers to create and adopt innovative conservation practices. Again, those who would severely restrict this program and kill it, as they have been trying to do, are opening the door for environmental regulations. The people of this country want cleaner air. They want cleaner water. They want to stop soil erosion. They want to clean up our rivers and our streams and our lakes. They want to stop what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with sediment and nutrients coming down the Mississippi. That is what this program is designed to do, to encourage farmers on a voluntary basis to implement these practices. The funding for CSP was like that for a commodity program. We were going to make producing conservation benefits much like a commodity. The commodity programs have no fixed cost limit, no cap, I say to the Senator from Alaska. They are uncapped programs, just like the milk income loss program is an uncapped program. There are a lot of these. We do this in the Agriculture Committee and in other committees, a lot. They are restricted not by an arbitrary cost limit but by the eligibility requirements. In order to get these payments, a farmer has to carry out substantial practices that will produce real conservation benefits. If you will do those things, you qualify. But you have to save your soil, protect your water, have cleaner air, enhance wildlife or conserve energy and those types of things. Then you qualify. What a few people did under the guidance of the President was to come in and take a lot of money out of the conservation program. I was surprised at this because two nights ago in the debate in St. Louis the President proclaimed his strong support for conservation. I said, wait a minute, as I was watching this debate. At the very moment the President was saying he supported conservation, he had his people up here on the Hill taking over $2.8 billion out of conservation, gutting conservation, taking out the money. The President cannot have it both ways. You cannot on television tell the American people you are for conservation and have your people up here taking the money out of conservation. That is exactly what the President and his people are doing. We all know it. That is what this fight is about. I say to the Senator from Pennsylvania, I am here to fight for farmers. I am here to fight for a cleaner environment. I am here to fight to help save and improve our nation's soil, clean our water and our air, enhance wildlife. I am here to fight to give our nation's farmers and ranchers the tools they need to be better producers, to be better stewards of their land. I am here to fight for our farmers. I am here to fight for the farmers of Pennsylvania, too. Even if the Senator himself won't fight for them, I will fight for them. I don't want to take money away from the farmers in Pennsylvania to send to Iowa or to send to Wyoming, Oklahoma, or anywhere else there is a disaster. Just as all taxpayers of this country are giving some of their taxes to help the victims of the hurricane, so, too, should we all, as we have for the last 50 years, provide assistance for those who suffer from tornados, floods, hailstorms, drought, and everything else. It is a national problem. The Senator from Pennsylvania may want to take money away from his farmers. I guess he did that yesterday when he was 1 of 14 who voted to take money away from his own farmers to send to those who suffered a disaster. I point out that Pennsylvania is in the hurricane assistance bill. They are going to get help and it will be emergency spending. Farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota, farmers in Ohio and Missouri and other places, were not affected by that hurricane. What about them? Why should they be treated differently? Their disaster hurts them as much as the hurricanes hurt people in Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. We ought to care as much about the farmers who were hit by a tornado or a mud slide or hail storms, acts of nature over which they have no control. Our farmers work hard. They produce the food and the fiber for our country. We have the best, most bountiful, cheapest food supply anywhere in the world, thanks to our farmers. They control a lot of things, but one thing they cannot control is the weather. Yes, there are crop insurance programs, but they do not cover all crops equally or sufficiently in so many situations. We have always said, when you get hit by a disaster, we will be there to help, just as we are for people in Pennsylvania. But I would hope the people of Pennsylvania--I know the people of Pennsylvania. They are not a selfish people. The people of Pennsylvania would want to help farmers in Iowa or Missouri or Wisconsin or Ohio. They would want to help farmers who lost a crop because of a flood in North Dakota. They would want that. They would want the Nation to do it, just as we are helping them. I am sorry that the Senator from Pennsylvania does not see it that way. I am sorry he can't be 1 of the 71 who voted to treat disaster assistance as an emergency and not take it out of the pockets of farmers. Our farmers work hard. They do not deserve this kind of treatment. The dairy farmers in Pennsylvania who got money under the milk income loss program, well, we put that in the farm bill for those dairy farmers in Pennsylvania. It does not affect my State as much as it does Pennsylvania. Well, I suppose you could say: We got ours. It is almost as if the Senator from Pennsylvania--it is almost as if I hear the words: Well, we got ours. To heck with everybody else. Well, look, we are all part of this country. We are all part of this Nation. When a disaster strikes someone in Hawaii, we ought to be there for them. Or Alaska, if there is an earthquake in Alaska, you bet we ought to be there for them. We should not take it out of Alaska's highway money, or we should not take it out of money that goes to Hawaii for medical care, or something like that. We should not do that. But evidently that is what some people around here are thinking. We should not say to the poor people in Florida: Look, I'm sorry. We'll give you hurricane assistance, but we are going to take it out of your highway money; we are going to take it out of your Medicare; we are going to take it out of other Federal programs that go into your State. That is not a caring kind of country if we do something like that. So I would hope that we could be a little more caring and considerate of those who have suffered disasters in this country and make sure that they, too, are treated just like we are treating people in Florida and Pennsylvania and the other States that got hit by the hurricanes. That is why I am here. That is why I am holding this up. That is why I wanted to get this corrected. I will fight--I will use every rule--I am not breaking any rule of the Senate, and I will not break any rules of the Senate--but I will use every rule I can of the Senate to stand up for farmers and for conservation and to stand up for people who were hit by disasters, to stand up for the agreements that we reached in the farm bill. We voluntarily and knowingly reached all of these agreements in writing the farm bill and we stayed strictly within the budget we were given for it. We signed the conference report on the dotted line. Both the House and Senate passed it by strong bipartisan majorities. The President signed the bill. Now the President and others want to come back and say: Well, everything is OK except this one program. We will take out this one. I am sorry, that is what gives this place a bad name. You cannot give your word you are going to do something and then you go back on it. You cannot do that around this place. The President has sent his people up here to do that. If the President really wants to support conservation, he ought to tell his people: Look, put that disaster assistance in the emergency spending package just as you did the hurricanes. That is the fair, the just, the reasonable, and the compassionate way of doing it. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining of my hour?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Hawaii for permitting me to go ahead of him. I yield the floor at this time.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I would be delighted to yield to my leader. I paid homage to him earlier and I will pay it again most respectfully. I cannot say enough good things about Senator Reid's strength and character, about his own personal attributes of honesty and forthrightness. When Senator Reid gives his word, go to the bank. One does not have to worry about it. He has a tough job. He has to deal with us and then he has to deal with the other side and try to work out these agreements. These are very tough negotiations. I could not ask for a better friend, a better person, to negotiate and work things out and get these compromises made. I could not ask for a better friend and a better person to do it than Senator Reid of Nevada. I yield to the Senator.

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

Mr. HARKIN. I will yield.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Louisiana. Let me return the bouquet. I thank the Senator from Louisiana on behalf of all the friends I have who are reservists--I was a reservist once myself in my younger years--all the National Guard people and the employers, the small businesspeople who try to do their best. These people are called up. They go to Iraq. Many times they try to give them some compensation, but they are leaving their families behind, their kids, their communities, and all the Senator has been asking for is to treat them fairly and decently, to help these employers make up that difference in income, many of whom are trying to do their best. But let's face it, a lot of them are small businesses. They cannot do it. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for standing up for small businesses, for standing up for our Guard and Reserve people who have given so much to this country, making sure they are treated equitably and fairly. I thank the Senator for doing this. This is an issue that has to be resolved, and again every guardsman and every Reserve person in the United States owes the Senator from Louisiana a great debt of thanks. I have to say this: If I am ever in a foxhole someplace, I want the Senator from Louisiana on my side because I know I will never have to worry about my backside if the Senator from Louisiana is there. She has what we call real grit. I am proud of her and thank her for being here this weekend and for never backing down. I thank her for standing up for our people in uniform in this country who are in the Guard and the Reserves. I also want to thank those on the Republican side, Leader Frist and others, who have worked to try to get accommodations made and reasonable agreements worked out. This is a place where there must be compromise. It is not your way or my way all the time. It is trying to work out compromises, trying to work out reasonable solutions to things. I thank those on the other side of the aisle who have worked this weekend with us. I especially want to also thank our leaders, Senator Daschle and Senator Reid, again for their willingness to work hard to try and work out these agreements with the leadership on the other side. These are contentious things, but we know that. Sometimes around here we are not the masters of our own fate. I know the administration comes in and they want things a certain way. Sometimes it is hard being a member of the majority party whose President is in the White House. It is tough. I know that because a lot of times we may want to do things one way and the White House wants it the other way and they make it very tough on Members of their party. I understand that. I have been there before. People of good reason can come together and work together to work these issues out. I know people took me to task today on the other side of the aisle. That is all right. I do not mind that. We have been around this place a long time. I want people to know I am going to stand here and fight for my farmers. They do not have many people fighting for them. They are a minority in this country. We got through a good farm bill in 2002 and the President signed it, touted conservation, and now twice conservation has been invaded, taking the money out of our farm program. It is not right to do it that way. So I am glad that when we come back in November to finalize our appropriations bills for next year--we have a continuing resolution until November 20 so we have to come back to finish that. Under the agreement we worked out, there will be an instruction to the conferees to undo what we did on the omnibus, to right what we did here and to make the conservation program whole again. That can be done. It can be done in November and, quite frankly, not too much will be upset in 1 month. We can live with that. We will get it straightened out in November. I am glad we have reached this kind of a resolution and we will come back in November and try to get things straightened out at that time. I want to thank those who have worked so hard to reach this agreement. I guess, as it goes now, we will be finished tomorrow and people can get back to their homes and campaign. I also want to publicly thank all of the people at the desk, the clerks, the reading clerks, our Parliamentarians and others, the floor people on both sides, Republican and Democrat. They have had to give up their family this weekend. I know that. I want to thank them publicly for being here and working long hours on Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday. It is now 8 at night. They provide a tremendous public service on both sides of the aisle. I know a lot of times they could probably get a lot more done if we Senators were not around. The staff can work out things. I also want to thank our reporters who are here. They have also worked long hours this weekend and given up their family time. I have to mention the pages, too. The pages probably had a nice weekend planned. We thank them for being here and permitting us to do our job. These are things sometimes that take a long time to work out. We try our best and we have our debates. We go back and forth, but we could not do our job without all of these wonderful people. They do make the Senate a wonderful place in which to work. It is 20 years that I have spent here. I never would have imagined in my younger life I would have had such an opportunity or an honor to serve my constituents in Iowa, indeed all of the people in this country, as a Senator. All of you who work and labor here do not get much glory. Nobody ever writes about you and you probably do not get on television, you do not get to speak on the Senate floor like we do, but we could never do our job without you. I want you to know I appreciate each and every one of you, Republican, Democrat, and those of you who do not have a party who are here in a nonpartisan capacity. You do make this place function well, and I thank you for it. I thank you for letting us do our job on the weekend.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN. I see the occupant of the chair, and I know he wants to go home. But I said to the managers I can be interrupted when they are ready to wrap up. I want the occupant to know I am not holding him here. I will talk about one other item that is not in this FSC bill that we got stiffed on. We passed it four times in the Senate and twice in the House. I am talking about overturning the regulations that this administration put out that will deny overtime rights to over 6 million people. Again, just last week, in a replay of what happened a year ago, the Bush administration used the conference to kill my provision to stop the Department of Labor's new rule on overtime pay that if allowed to stand will strip 6 million people of their right to time and a half overtime. The bill before the Senate today serves the simplest of purposes. This tax bill has everything in it for everyone, but what is not in it is protection for the workers of America, protection for those who make over $23,660 a year. Actually, for some below because of little gimmicks that can be used to deny them their right to overtime. Again, this is simply a matter of fairness. People believe if they put in more than 40 hours of work a week, they are giving up premium time, time with their family. I had a woman who wrote me and said: Look, I go home from work and my second job starts. I go home, take care of my kids, I get dinner ready, help them with their homework, and then I have to do washing, and this and that. But my time with my family is my premium time. If I am asked to give up my premium time with my family to work on my job, I ought to get premium pay. What the Bush administration has done is said: No, sorry, we will ask you to work overtime and we will not pay you one cent more. Again, a little history. It has been sacrosanct since 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you work over 40 hours a week, you get time- and-a-half pay. It has been that way since 1938. We have modified it a little bit here, a little bit there, but every single time we have changed the Fair Labor Standards Act, we have enlarged the pool of people who get covered by time and a half. This is the first time where up to 6 million people will lose their right to overtime pay. Now, some will say but they raised the base to $23,660. In other words, anyone who earns under that is automatically eligible for overtime. Quite frankly, most people working there are already eligible because they are not salaried, they are hourly workers. While that is fine, we should raise the base. The administration then went and took away overtime pay rights for anyone making over $23,660 a year. If you are making $23,661, you are in a separate category. Just barely over-- well, that is poverty wages--and you still are not eligible for time and a half overtime. I also say every time since 1938 when we have changed the Fair Labor Standards Act, it has come to Congress. We go through the committees, the committees have hearings, we bring in witnesses, they draft a bill, it is debated in the Senate, and it finally goes to the President. That is the way it ought to be. That is transparent; it is open; everyone gets their say. We can debate it and amend it. We, the elected representatives of the people, get to debate and amend it--a strange concept, I guess, to this administration. What this administration did 1\1/2\ years ago, sort of in the stealth of night without having one public hearing, they promulgated these new rules on overtime. Some might say: Well, they have had hearings since then. Yes, thanks a lot, after the horse is out of the barn and they closed the door. Fine. But that is not the way it should have been. So now we have a situation where they finalize the rules on August 23. We have never really debated or amended that in the Senate. I have on four different occasions in the Senate offered amendments to overturn those rules, to go back to square one, to start over. Let's do it the right way. We have passed them here, but the administration says no every time. I watched the debate last night, and I heard the President talking about domestic policies and jobs and economic growth. And I thought, wait a minute, he even talked about overtime. He said people are working overtime. I heard him say it last night. I thought, they are working overtime, but what the administration wants to do is take away their overtime pay. That is exactly what is happening. We have facts. We have the data. People are now being denied time and a half overtime for working over 40 hours a week because they are being ``reclassified.'' Guess who is getting hit first. Women. Why do I say that? Many women raise families, start later in life, and start at lower income jobs. Many of these are salaried positions. Because they are on a salary, they will be reclassified. As they get reclassified, they will be exempt from the overtime laws. If overtime is free to the employer, it will be overused. This chart shows a study by the Center for Women's Work at Rutgers University. The chart shows those who are eligible for overtime, in the green, are protected; the red are not protected. Those protected by overtime work are about 20 percent of workers working 40 hours a week. If they are protected, chances are 20 percent of these people work over 40 hours a week. If they are not protected by overtime, 44 percent of these people work over 40 hours a week--twice as many. So now we will take away this protection from this 20 percent. Then they will be working overtime, and they will not get paid for it. Right now, if they are covered by overtime protection, only 5 percent work over 50 hours a week. If they are not covered by overtime, 15 percent, three times as many people not covered by overtime laws work over 50 hours a week. That says it right there. If the employer does not have to pay you time and a half, work them more, and they will not hire any new workers. It is interesting to note--the occupant of the chair will find this interesting--in 1933, 5 years before the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law, the Senate voted 53 to 30 to set a cap on the number of hours in a workweek. Was the cap 50 hours? Was it 40 hours? No, it was 30 hours. Imagine in 1933, this Senate, in this Chamber, voted 53 to 30 to say that the workweek would be 30 hours. You could not pass 60 hours here now. Imagine that. In 1933, this Senate voted 53 to 30 to set a 30-hour workweek. Amazing. The compromise was reached 5 years later at 40 hours a week, and that is what it has been ever since. Again, we know what the intent of this proposed rule is. The intent of this proposed rule is to allow employers to work employees longer than 40 hours a week and not have to pay them time and a half. And we have a final rule on that, a final rule. These are going to be low- to middle-income workers. They are not organized. They do not have a strong voice. So the administration feels they can run roughshod over their rights. For the life of me, I cannot understand this. People work hard. Many families are working two jobs where the husband and wife are both working, trying to make ends meet, trying to save a little money to put away for the kid's college education, maybe to buy a better house, move up the ladder a little bit. For those who work overtime, 25 percent of their income comes from overtime. I see the managers are here to wrap up. I will just conclude by saying that, again, just as it is a shame and a shame on us that we do not have FDA control of tobacco, shame on us also, and shame on this administration, for taking away the overtime rights of 6 million people in this country. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank a number of people. I thank Senator DeWine for his dynamic and great leadership on the issue of FDA regulation of tobacco products. He has been in the forefront of this fight for a long time. I thank him for his leadership, working again with Senator Kennedy on this issue and so many others on both sides of the aisle to get that position established by the Senate, which we did, and that was that we would have a tobacco buyout but also FDA regulation of tobacco, finally. We spoke on that, but, of course, the House didn't go along, and we find ourselves now with this great big tax bill of around 630 pages we have on our desk. Guess what. No FDA regulation of tobacco. I thank Senator DeWine and I thank Senator Landrieu for her strong and dynamic leadership in being here on a Saturday night to continue to make the point about what happened to our guardsmen and reservists in the United States. It is unconscionable what the House and the President did on this issue. We ought to put the blame where it really lies; it is at the White House. That is where it lies. I might say the House, but they are just doing what the White House wants them to do. They are just a rubberstamp for the White House. It is the White House that called the shots on that one. I thank Senator Landrieu for sticking up for our people in uniform, for those all over the country who have been shortchanged by this so- called tax bill. Mr. President, I want to take some time here to speak about tobacco and how unconscionable it is that this bill does not have FDA regulation of tobacco included. Over the last several days, we have heard a great deal about the dangers of smoking and the devastation caused to millions of families every year. With the results of the conference report on Wednesday, I fear colleagues have not been listening to the details of the public health crisis our Nation faces regarding tobacco and smoking. Let me repeat them loudly and clearly so Members understand what they are opposing and why we so urgently need FDA regulation of tobacco. One, smoking kills more than 450,000 Americans every year. Over the last 10 years, smoking has claimed more than 4.4 million lives. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in this country. Smoking causes heart disease, cancer, emphysema, and a host of other related illnesses. Two-thousand kids start smoking every day, and, ultimately, one in three will die of smoking-related causes. Smoking-related medical expenditures have indirect costs resulting from lost work activity. There are 250 chemicals in tobacco smoke that are toxic or cause cancer in humans. Tobacco use accounts for at least 30 percent of all cancer deaths. Smoking causes nearly 87 percent of all lung cancers, which is the leading cause of cancer deaths. Last year, nearly 70,000 women died from lung cancer in the United States. That is more deaths than from breast cancer and all gynecological cancers combined--70,000 women. If these facts don't paint a stark picture of the urgency for FDA regulation of tobacco, I don't know what will. You know, when there is an outbreak of food poisoning in a local school, we move Heaven and Earth to find the source and take appropriate action to make sure our kids don't get sick again. But somehow, when it comes to protecting our kids from a known toxin--tobacco--we find our hands tied. Why? Well, it is because of big tobacco. There is too much at stake in terms of profit loss for tobacco companies to allow this regulation to go through. They have been fighting it for years. I introduced the first-ever comprehensive bipartisan FDA regulation with, I might say, Senator Bob Graham and former Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island. That bill was introduced almost 6 years ago. I heard the same reasons then that I do now on how unnecessary FDA regulation is. Quite frankly, our bill went much further and was much tougher than this one. Creating a more sensible policy for tobacco has been a goal of mine for many years. It was in 1977, in my second term in the House of Representatives, over 21 years ago, that I first introduced legislation calling for repeal of the tax deductibility of tobacco advertising and marketing. Unfortunately, victories in the tobacco wars for consumers and for our kids have come few and far between. Tobacco wins every time. With the mounting evidence we have today about the absolute dangers of smoking, it is paramount we pass a comprehensive plan that would once and for all change how this Nation deals with tobacco and dramatically cut the number of our kids addicted to this deadly product. That said, I am afraid the power of big tobacco has once again superseded the need to protect public health. The fact is we know now that 90 percent of current smokers became hooked on tobacco as kids. That should sound alarms that something needs to be done to stop this from happening, and to prevent senseless disease and death that is linked with this addiction. This is a drug addiction. Tobacco is a drug. It is addictive, just like methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. It is addictive and it kills you. For too long, kids have been getting an unfiltered message from the tobacco industry: Smoking is cool. Smoking is harmless. Smoking is glamorous. Smoking is for active young people and will make you look more attractive. Today, big tobacco companies spend more than $11.5 billion a year in advertising and marketing their products. Children are exposed to messages that are deliberately designed to attract a new generation to the smoking habit. The motivations are clear: Anything to make more money for big tobacco. Now we hear from tobacco companies all the time that, oh, no, their advertising is to get people to shift brands, go from one brand to the other. Well, I will illustrate here very shortly that is not what they are up to. Many think regulation is unwarranted after some of the restrictions that were agreed to as part of the master settlement agreement a few years ago. The good old MSA, the master settlement agreement. Yes, there are billboard restrictions and a few things such as that, but now we have much more sophisticated mechanisms. Let me refresh some memories. Here is Joe Camel, a smooth character, Joe, flying his jet airplane with the afterburners going. He has a beautiful young woman looking over her shoulder, looking at Joe Camel with his Camel cigarette. Who is this appealing to? Kids. Now, there is another Joe Camel here. Here is Joe Camel, with Camel Lights, cool Joe. He has his red convertible and black T-shirt and Levi's, and Joe is cool. Joe Camel is a neat guy. Well, we forced big tobacco to get rid of Joe. They did. We do not see Joe Camel any longer so we can take old Joe down. Joe Camel is gone. I want to refresh memories. I want to refresh memories, because there was a time--and I will repeat this, there was a time--a study was done that kids in America recognized Joe Camel more than they recognized Mickey Mouse. It is true. But we got rid of Joe Camel. One might ask, what now do you need? I will show my colleagues why we need to have FDA regulation, because tobacco has gotten smart. They are now spending more than ever on predatory marketing since the MSA was agreed to. Big tobacco is spending 60 percent more on marketing than they were before the master settlement agreement. Again, are they trying to get people to switch? Let us take a look. Here is Liquid Zoo. Now, I had a pack of those with me when we were in conference. I was one of the conferees arguing to keep the FDA regulation that we had in the Senate, and I had strawberry flavor. This was Liquid Zoo, strawberry flavor. When you smell it, why, you would swear you were in a strawberry patch. It smelled wonderful. It smelled like strawberries. This is the tobacco. Liquid Zoo-flavored cigarettes are an exotic blend of strawberry-flavored tobaccos for a sweet, fresh taste and aroma. Do they really think they are trying to get someone to switch from Marlboros or Winstons or Camels to that? That is going right to our kids. That is what this is about. Then we have Kool Rapper here. We have another one. Here is the Kool Rapper. Here is a rapper. He is cool. He has his mike and he is spinning the disk or CD or whatever it is there, and everyone is dancing and that is called Kool Rapper. Now, do my colleagues think they are trying to go after adults with that? Do my colleagues think they are trying to go after 40 and 50- year-old people to get them to switch from Marlboro or Winston or Camel to that? No. This is for kids. They are getting to young people. They are spending 60 percent more on marketing now than they did before the master settlement agreement, and we took away Joe Camel on billboards, but now they are spending 60 percent more and this is where it is going. Because what do they know? They know 90 percent of all tobacco smokers today started when they were young. They get them hooked early. I have another Kool Rapper here. This is just, again, special edition packs. Now, they do not any longer have the little coupons where you can get gear and all that kind of stuff. That is gone, but now they have special edition packs: Celebrate the sound track to the streets. It does not take a genius to figure out who they are targeting with that. So big tobacco has found tricks and dodges to circumvent the law, and they have been very effective. From the birth of Joe Camel to the birth of Liquid Zoo and Kool Rapper, we have seen broken promises and bad faith again and again from big tobacco. Giving the FDA the power it needs to end these false messages is exactly what is needed to stop big tobacco's exploitation of our kids. The only message our young kids should hear about tobacco is the truth: Smoking is a killer. It is a drug. It is addictive. It causes cancer. It causes emphysema. It causes a lot of other illnesses. That message needs to come through loudly and clearly. Since industry will not convey that message, we need strong FDA regulation to make it happen. Instead, what do we do here now with this big tax bill we have? We allow big tobacco to further confuse kids when it comes to the actual safety of cigarettes. This morning I got up and I had my Cheerios. I actually had a bowl of Cheerios this morning. Now, the bowl of Cheerios I ate this morning had to go through a multistep process set up by the Food and Drug Administration to earn its health claims that it is heart healthy and lowers cholesterol. It had to go through certain steps. Somehow tobacco, a known health risk, does not have to go through any of those steps whatsoever. In fact, tobacco companies are free to add anything they want to their product without having to inform consumers or without any regard to the health effects of those additives. For example, tobacco companies have added ammonia to their products. I do not know if my colleagues have ever smelled ammonia, but they get an idea of what it is like. They add ammonia to tobacco products on the ground that it improves ``tobacco satisfaction.'' They add the ammonia in order to create a ``free base'' form of nicotine that creates the highly addictive quick delivery form of nicotine to the brain. It goes from your lungs to your brain in 8 to 10 seconds when they add ammonia. We know this. So tobacco companies add ammonia so that you get a bigger kick right away, in 8 to 10 seconds. Adding ammonia to cigarettes is analogous to what crack cocaine was to cocaine--it just gives you a faster high, it goes to your brain quicker. But guess what. The tobacco companies do not have to tell you that. They just tell you have a Kool Wrapper there. They don't have to tell you anything else. The industry claims that many of its ingredients are benign flavoring agents like strawberry that are on the FDA GRAS list. That stands for Generally Recognized As Safe. The tobacco companies say we put these ingredients in and they are benign; however, those ingredients such as chocolate, licorice, and other flavors are not safe when they are combusted, and they often create toxic chemicals when they are inhaled by the smoker. So, yes, maybe licorice is safe to eat, but when you combust it, then it creates toxics that you inhale. The industry will not tell you that either. No other industry in America is allowed to add ingredients to their products without first having them tested and approved by the Federal Drug Administration for safety. For example, Kraft Foods, a subsidiary of Altria Group along with Philip Morris, could not add ammonia to Kraft macaroni and cheese on the grounds that it improves cheese satisfaction for its customers. Why can't they add ammonia to macaroni and cheese? They can't add ammonia to macaroni and cheese because it is not on the FDA list of products that are generally recognized as safe. They can add ammonia to cigarettes; they can't add it to Kraft macaroni and cheese. The FDA has more authority to regulate macaroni and cheese than it does cigarettes. Imagine that. I have this to show what I mean by that. Here is something called Omni cigarettes. Here is what it reads: Omni is the first premium cigarette created to significantly reduce carcinogenic PAHs and nitrous amines, which are the major causes of lung cancer in smoking.'' That is what they say. Says who? The tobacco company says that. But we have no way of verifying that. They can make all the claims they want, like low tar, light, less carcinogenic, but we the public have no way to verify that because the Federal Food and Drug Administration has no authority to regulate tobacco or to go in and tell us what is in there or to make the tobacco companies verify what they say. I have an Eclipse one here, too. Here is an Eclipse. This is interesting: The best choice for smokers who worry about their health is to quit. Here is the next best choice. Are you ready for Eclipse? Get the facts. I have the support of my wife..if I'm going to smoke, she'd prefer I smoke Eclipse. A better way to smoke. Talk about a warped message: Omni, there is no better way to smoke. A better way to smoke? There is a better way to get cancer. There is a better way to get emphysema. This cigarette will give it to you faster. They don't tell you that, but that is what is happening. During debate in the conference committee, one of my colleagues on the House side mentioned that the Founding Fathers would be shocked if they knew that Congress was trying to regulate an industry that was in part responsible for the early prosperity of our country. It is more likely that they are rolling over in their graves at the fact that we have known for more than 30 years that tobacco kills and that we have not done one thing about it. They didn't know it in the 1700s. They didn't know, but we know now. The Congress is now considering, one more time, giving immunity to big tobacco and turning a blind eye to their responsibility to protect our kids and the public health. That is what is not in this tax bill. There are tax breaks for all kinds of things. There are tax breaks in here for gamblers who come from foreign countries to gamble here. Imagine that, they need a tax break. There is a tax break in here for people who import ceiling fans from China. Lord only knows what else is in this tax bill. No one has really read it. No one knows what all these numbers and staff mean. There is a tax break here and a tax gimmick there; a tax break here and a tax gimmick there. When this bill was before the Senate, this Senate added a provision that did two things. It allowed for a buyout of tobacco farmers' quotas--which I have been in favor of for years, by the way. Coupled with that is FDA regulation of tobacco. Again, as someone who sits on the Agriculture Committee and also on the HELP Committee, I have been involved in both sides. I have espoused for a long time that we have a tobacco buyout, that we buy out these quotas. Why should we do that? These quotas were put on 60 or 70 years ago. They have been built into the price of the land. I can't go back and undo that. It is a fact of life. Many farmers in tobacco growing States--some of them are small farmers. All they have is that quota. They don't have anything else. The land is really not worth that much. So it is like taking away their income base. So I have always said we need to buy these quotas out and get rid of this tobacco program for once and for all. On the HELP Committee side, I have also said, if we are going to do that, then we ought to have FDA jurisdiction over tobacco. This debate went on and on for years, and final we agreed. I might say that Philip Morris was one of those who agreed with us. I commend them for that. So we got it through the Senate. It goes to the House. Guess what the House did. The tobacco buyout that we passed in the Senate, the money that is going to go to those tobacco farmers did not come from the taxpayers. It came from the tobacco companies. Of course, the tobacco companies will pass that on to tobacco smokers, so the smokers were going to pay for the buyout of the quotas. That is as it should be. Why should the taxpayers pay for it? We agreed on that. Philip Morris agreed on that. We agreed that we would have FDA jurisdiction. Here is what the House did. They broke that agreement. First of all, the House of Representatives, and I am sure with the approval of the Bush White House because they wouldn't have done it unless the White House agreed, they made the buyout of the quotas paid for by the taxpayers of the country. All of you who do not smoke, you are now going to pay to buy out those tobacco farmers. That is what was in the House bill, plus they took away the FDA jurisdiction over tobacco. In the final analysis, they put back in the companies paying for the buyout, but they left out the FDA regulation of tobacco. So here we are. No FDA regulation. That is what is not in this FSC bill. It was my understanding the purpose of this bill was to repeal an illegal export subsidy. Now it has morphed into a big special interest giveaway that will help everyone from restaurant owners to makers of bows and arrows, tackle boxes, sonar fishfinders, NASCAR track owners, Alaskan whalers, foreign gamblers, as I mentioned, who win at U.S. horse and dog tracks. I want to repeat that. In this bill, there are provisions to give tax breaks to foreign gamblers who win at U.S. horse and dog tracks. Those interests trump the 2,000 kids hooked on smoking every day by the big tobacco companies. Imagine that. What are our priorities around here? What is the priority of the White House? I am telling you it could never have happened unless the President signed off on it. You go out there, Mr. President. You have some more days before the election. Go out there and tell the American people how you pulled the rug from underneath FDA regulations of tobacco, how you sided with the big tobacco companies to get our kids hooked on tobacco every day-- 2,000 every day. Go out and look those mothers and fathers in the eye and tell them your priority is the big tobacco companies and not their kids. Yes. This would never have been done if the White House had not OK'd taking FDA jurisdiction away. Shame on the White House. We had the opportunity here to pass this legislation once and for all, and to stamp out youth smoking in this country and protect kids from joining the ranks of the 450,000 who die from smoking each year. The tobacco industry has been engaged in a systematic campaign of distortion and deceit to hook kids and hide the facts from the American people for far too long. I met a fifth grader, Ted Stanton, from Des Moines, IA, a few months ago who reminded me how important regulation is. Ted won a statewide poster contest sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians for his efforts to raise awareness about smoking. He is a fifth grader. What happened was Ted has had to watch his dad struggle with the habit of smoking for years. He drew a poster. His poster is an attempt to warn kids about smoking. Here is his poster and here is why he won the prize. ``Invest in your future.'' He has the date 2054. ``Pay to the order of big tobacco companies $73,000.'' That is $4 a pack every day times 50 years. In other words, you smoke a pack a day for 53 years and you will pay big tobacco companies $73,000. I thought Ted Stanton, a fifth grader, really pointed it out. That is what you are doing when you start smoking. You are going to smoke for 50 years, if you are a teenager, a pack a day, $73,000. We do have some kids like Ted and others who realize they are being targeted by big tobacco, but they are defenseless. What are we doing to help them? What we are doing is protecting big tobacco--the same guys who conspired years ago to hide the truth about tobacco and instead pushed their deadly products on our most valued treasure, our kids. It is disgraceful that this body has not acted yet. It is disgraceful that we are getting half of the deal we had worked on for years, the tobacco buyout of the quotas. Guess what happened. The way they worked this tobacco quota buyout is you are going to buy out the quotas, but now tobacco will be growing cheaper. Now the tobacco companies will be able to buy tobacco cheaper than they had before, making more money, hooking more kids, without FDA authority. The reason I say that is because when we passed the bill in the Senate, we had a provision that provided for a licensing program that would prohibit more and more people growing tobacco in this country. The House took that out. So we got the worst of all possible worlds--no FDA regulation, a buyout of the quotas, more people will be able to grow tobacco, and the tobacco companies will get it cheaper and make more money to hook our kids. What a deal. Yet we can take care of foreign gamblers who come to bet on horses. But we can't take care of our kids. Shame on us. (Mr. HATCH assumed the Chair.) I know the hour is getting late. I see the occupant of the Chair, someone for whom I have great respect, the Senator from Utah. I will state publicly that the senior Senator from Utah has also been in the forefront of the fight against tobacco. He always has been. I compliment him for that. I know he feels as strongly about antismoking and stopping kids from smoking as I do, or as Senator DeWine does, or Senator Kennedy, or anybody else does. The Senator from Utah has been stalwart in his support for getting FDA regulation of tobacco. I thank him for that. I encourage him to keep up his leadership on that because we have not yet fired the last shot. We are going to be back. I wish the President of the United States, using the bully pulpit of the White House, had come out in an address to the Nation and said we need FDA regulations for tobacco, we need to stop our kids from getting hooked, and call upon the House and the Senate and say he will not sign this bill, he will veto this bill unless we protect our kids. Think of what would have happened if the President of the United States had said that. We would have a tax bill here, but we would have FDA regulation of tobacco in here. I am sorry the President missed a golden opportunity and thus we have missed a golden opportunity. Thus, tomorrow and the day after, and next month, and next month, and next year, thousands of kids every day might pick up a pack of Liquid Zoo, because it smells nice. It tastes like strawberries. They will say, There is no harm in that, plus it makes me look glamorous. That is what all the ads say. Think about it. That is what is going to happen. Shame on us. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, you touted the conservation program. Last night you said you fought for a strong conservation title in the farm bill. And now you are taking money out of conservation to pay for disasters. Please, Mr. President, I am telling you, get ahold of your people who are at OMB--your people. They work for you. Get them on the phone right now and tell them, this agricultural disaster money ought to come out of emergency assistance, just like you proposed for the hurricanes, and not out of farmers' own pockets. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I understand there was an order, and I am allowed to speak for 5 minutes. Disaster Assistance I take this time first to thank all the Senators who voted for S. 454, expressing the sense of the Senate that disaster assistance ought to be emergency spending and not taken as an offset out of any other program, especially the farm bill. The vote was overwhelming, 71 to 14. Once again, as we have in the past, the Senate has spoken very loudly and clearly that when a disaster strikes, wherever it is, this is an emergency. It ought to be taken out of the whole pot of Government money rather than invading a program and taking money out it as an offset. Again, I have the deepest sympathy for all the people who got hit by the hurricane in Florida and other States. They ought to be compensated. That is a true emergency. It is a disaster. But we have had disasters in other parts of the country. We have had floods, tornados, droughts, all kind of things. Just because it is not a big hurricane does not mean it is not just as devastating. It is. It makes no sense why we should have to then offset, take money out of existing farm programs, to pay for agricultural disaster assistance. But that is the position of President Bush and of the House leadership. We do not require offsets to respond to the hurricane disaster, and we should not do it for any other disaster. Seventy-one Senators again spoke and said emergencies are emergencies. Disasters require emergency spending. I have to point out that last night in the debate in St. Louis the President said he had fought for strong conservation provisions in the farm bill. I was there when the President signed the farm bill in May 2002, and he touted the conservation title and how much he supported it and that one of the main reasons he was signing it was because of the strong conservation title. Yet today, his people, the President's own people from the White House and OMB, are up here telling the members of the House and Senators that in order to respond to the droughts, flooding, tornados and other disasters we have had around the country, that the disaster payments have to be taken out of the farm bill and that the place to take them is from conservation. Yes, you heard me correctly. The President of the United States, who so loudly last night said he fought for a strong conservation title in the farm bill, today, his people are up here and saying to take money out of conservation to pay for agricultural disaster assistance. I am sorry, can someone please join the dots for me? What is happening? The President is saying one thing, but his people are up here doing exactly the opposite. Does the President not know what his people are doing up here or have they not informed him or what is going on? The farmers and ranchers of this country, as well as Americans who support conservation, ought to know that there is a provision soon coming before the Senate that will take money out of conservation to pay for disasters. It is wrong. Seventy-one Senators just spoke and said it is wrong. Yet the White House is insisting that disaster money has to be taken out of conservation. The White House and the House insist on provisions that basically take money away with hand and give it back with the other and say to farmers and ranchers: You are better off. It is a cruel hoax for agricultural producers. Farmers who receive disaster payments should not suffer the loss of other farm bill benefits. Nor should our Nation's farmers as a whole, the majority of whom will not receive any disaster payments, be forced to bear the cost of disaster assistance by having farm bill benefits taken away to be transferred to a disaster program for only some farmers. Why should the farmers in Pennsylvania have their conservation funding taken away from them to transfer to farmers in Nebraska or Wyoming or Colorado or Oklahoma or Texas or wherever the disaster may be. The White House did not say to do that for Florida's hurricane losses. They did not say to take money away from Alaska or Ohio or places like that to go to Florida. No, and they should not have. We should all pitch in as we have before, the whole country, to respond to the hurricane recovery. We pitch in because it is a disaster and emergency and so we fund it as an emergency, not by taking funding away from other vital programs. Yet for agricultural disaster assistance responding to droughts, or floods or other disasters, the White House and the House leadership are telling farmers and ranchers they will have to bear the cost of it by losing conservation funding from the farm bill. I am sorry, it is not right and not fair. And 71 Senators said it is not. Again, I ask the President: Please, Mr. President, you touted the conservation program.

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent for just 30 more seconds.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks a letter to a number of Representatives on the House side from a number of conservation groups also be printed at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. HARKIN. Lastly, I have heard the argument that drought is long term; there is some kind of climate change, but for the western part of the United States, which has had droughts for the last 4 or 5 years, we cannot continue to give disaster money if it is going to be a drought one year after another. Guess what. Florida sits in hurricane alley. They have had hurricanes going back for 100 years. Guess what. Hurricanes are going to hit Florida next year and the year after and the year after. Should we say we cannot give disaster money to Florida because this is a long-term type thing? That is what I heard about drought assistance because we have had it for 5 years. Because we have been hit by 5 years of drought, that is long term and therefore we cannot help you? Maybe we ought to take a look at hurricane alley. Maybe they shouldn't get help because they will get hit by another hurricane next year or the year after. We don't get hit by hurricanes in Iowa. They do not bother us. But we get hit by things such as tornados and hail damage and drought and, yes, floods. Lastly, this bill, in helping the drought-stricken farmers--and my friend from North Dakota knows this very well--it only covers 1 year. We have had a drought for 4, 5, or 6 years. Farmers who suffered crop losses in both 2003 and 2004 will get to pick 1 year, either 2003 or 2004, you pick one, that is all the disaster assistance you get. It does not cover 7 years; it covers 1 year. I wanted to clear this up. I hear rumors and misconceptions around here. I wanted to make the record clear that, yes, we have had some problems--such as tornados. Oklahoma gets hit by tornados, and Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa. We have had a lot. We will next summer because we are in tornado alley. Does that mean if a tornado strikes we should not get any disaster money because we get hit by tornados every year? No. Neither should the farmers in the Dakotas or Montana or places that have a drought right now, nor should they be penalized because they have been hit by some dry weather for a few years. Exhibit 1 [From the Des Moines Register, Oct. 9, 2004] Midwest Farmers May Lose Out With Disaster Aid Washington, DC.--Farmers hit by a succession of crop losses hoped an election year would bring some extra cash from the government. However, House Republicans are pushing for cuts in farm programs to pay for a $3 billion package of farm-disaster assistance, and agriculture groups may drop their support for the aid. Cutting farm programs to pay for the assistance would amount to taking money from growers in the Midwest and giving it to producers in drought-stricken areas of Montana, the Dakotas and other Plains states. The prime target for the cuts is the popular Conservation Security Program written by Sen. Tom Harkin. ``If disaster assistance comes out of the farm bill, then we oppose disaster assistance,'' said Mary Kay Thatcher, a lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. Democrats accused Republicans of hypocrisy. The White House is pushing Congress to pass special emergency assistance for Florida hurricane victims, including farmers there, without demanding spending cuts. Florida is a key state in the presidential race. ``It is not right to treat farmers in one part of this country different than farmers in another,'' Harkin said. The House passed legislation earlier in the week that would pay for the drought assistance by capping the cost of the Conservation Security Program. ``The reality of the situation is that there will be no disaster money before we go home unless we provide budget offsets,'' said the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. Friday, lawmakers were looking into trimming things other than the Conservation Security Program because of technical problems with targeting the conservation payments, congressional aides said. Harkin, a Democrat, pledged to slow some must-pass bills unless Republicans backed off making the cuts. Friday afternoon, he blocked the Senate from considering amendments to an intelligence-reform bill. The Senate passed a version of the drought aid paid for by adding to the federal budget deficit. Farmers could get payments for losses in either 2003 or 2004. Iowa farmers would likely receive about $200 million to $250 million in disaster payments, primarily to cover damage to soybean fields, according to Harkin's staff. The Iowa Farm Bureau has estimated damage from the 2003 drought at $750 million. The Conservation Security Program is designed to reward farmers for practices that prevent soil erosion and other environmental problems. Some 2,188 farms, including 290 in Iowa, were signed up for the program this year. Enrollment was limited to 18 watersheds, or river drainage areas. The National Corn Growers Association never endorsed the disaster aid package, partly out of concern that it mean reductions in other farm spending, said Jon Doggett, a lobbyist for the group.

Mr. HARKIN. I will read one sentence from the editorial: "The reality of the situation is that there will be no disaster money before we go home unless we provide budget offsets,'' said the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. Easy for him to say; farmers in his State are covered by the hurricane disaster assistance package. He doesn't have to worry about whether it is emergency money. What kind of selfishness is that around here? If you are from a State where you get the hurricane disaster assistance, to heck with everybody else? The Des Moines Register editorial said: Cutting farm programs to pay for the assistance would amount to taking money from growers in the Midwest and giving it to producers in drought-stricken areas of Montana, the Dakotas and other Plains states. I want to help those farmers. They should be helped. But as Senator Daschle said, they should not take it out of one pocket and put it in another. I also ask that a letter from a number of different farm groups opposing the using of farm bill conservation money for disaster assistance be printed in the Record following my remarks. This is in opposition to the President's position.