Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I say to the Senator, that is encouraging news. We will get to that. I see the Senator from Arizona is on the floor and has offered an amendment. I would like to ask him, if I could, without losing my right to the floor for right now, is the Senator wishing to debate the amendment that he laid down last week?

Mr. HARKIN. I am glad to yield without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I am sorry. I was conversing with a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. I missed the question.

Mr. HARKIN. I move to reconsider the vote by which the motion was agreed to.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I will let the Senator from Kansas, my good friend, close. It is his amendment. Senator Roberts is a great friend of mine. We have worked together for many years. We have a different philosophy and a different policy on agriculture. Senator Roberts believes very strongly in Freedom to Farm. I understand and respect that. Quite frankly, there were some good things I said earlier in committee that shocked him to death about Freedom to Farm. Planning flexibility, for example, we keep that in there. But what I have heard from my farmers in Iowa, and all over this country, is that we need to modify Freedom to Farm. We don't need to throw it all out the window, but we need to modify it because what has been lacking is a decent income farm safety net. That is why we are here every year, year after year, with billions of dollars to help bail out farmers. So what we have done in our bill is kept the best of the old Freedom to Farm, but we put in a good safety net. We have four legs to our chair, or stool, of support: Direct payments, good loan rates, conservation payments, and a countercyclical payment when prices are low. Cochran-Roberts has two legs; that is all. They have direct payments, and they have some modest lower loan rates, and that is all. Our farmers are saying they need a better safety net. That is what we did. We modified Freedom to Farm. Farmers want more conservation. We have the money for conservation in that, which Cochran-Roberts takes out. Energy: We put in a new title on energy. Our farmers are saying that is the market for the future. They say: We are going to make ethanol, soy diesel, and we will create biomass energy. That is going to be our market for the future. Mr. President, they gut that program. Rural development: Every farmer I have ever spoken to says: It doesn't do anything good if you save my farm and our small towns go down the drain. We need better job opportunities in rural communities. That is what we have in our bill. That is what Cochran-Roberts takes away. If all you want to do is continue what we have been doing for the past 5 years on Freedom to Farm, then you will want to support Cochran- Roberts. But if you want to modify Freedom to Farm, not throw it all out, but have a good safety net, good conservation programs, and energy programs so we will have more ethanol in the country and develop more soy diesel and other things, and if you want a strong rural development program that will provide for jobs and economic opportunity for off- farm income in rural America, that is in the committee bill. That is why Cochran-Roberts should be defeated. We don't need to continue down the road just with Freedom to Farm as we have in the past 5 years. Let's modify it.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the order before the Senate right now?

Mr. HARKIN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we are making progress. We had a good debate on the Cochran-Roberts amendment. Two good friends and two very valuable members of the Agriculture Committee have had a good debate on this. It was the substantive vote on whether or not we were going to stick with the committee bill. There are other amendments that will be offered that might change things on the edges, but this was the substantive vote on whether or not we would go with the committee bill. I hope now that we can begin to dispose of some amendments in a timely fashion. Right now, if I am not mistaken, one of the underlying amendments is the amendment offered by Senator Smith, and there was a second degree offered by Senator Torricelli. I would like to move to table that amendment, but obviously they want to speak a little bit longer on it. I checked with them and Senator Smith and Senator Torricelli and Senator Dorgan agreed on 3 minutes each on that. I ask unanimous consent the author of the amendment, Senator Smith, be allowed to speak for 3 minutes; following him, Senator Torricelli for 3 minutes, and Senator Dorgan for 3 minutes, and at the end of that time, all time end and I be recognized for a motion to table the underlying Smith amendment. I call for the regular order. Amendment No. 2596

Mr. HARKIN. How much time remains on both sides?

Mr. HARKIN. I would be more than honored to give my friend from Wyoming 5 minutes off our time to speak against my own bill.

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Hampshire be allowed to speak for 3 minutes, Senator Torricelli for 3 minutes, and Senator Dorgan for 3 minutes, and at the end of that time I be recognized to move to table.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I move to table the Smith amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN. Thank you very much.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I will give him a couple more minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the problem is if we start the McCain amendment and people start filibustering, we will have another filibuster going here. The Senator from Arizona has been forthright.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I yield myself 10 minutes, and ask the Chair to remind me when my 10 minutes are up.

Mr. HARKIN. We are on the farm bill and the pending business is an amendment offered by the Senator from Montana, Senator Burns; is that correct?

Mr. HARKIN. I have 18 minutes?

Mr. HARKIN. I yield myself 10 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. The administration is supporting the Cochran-Roberts amendment even though earlier this year they wanted money in a program like this to pay farmers on working lands. They zero it out. I guess this administration doesn't give a hoot about conservation. That is exactly it. They want to talk about it. They want to put it in a nice, fancy book. But they don't want to pay for it. They don't want to pay farmers for being good conservationists. They want to support Cochran-Roberts. This is why I talked about conservation, maintaining and paying farmers for what they are already doing. This is the one chart on which I think even Mr. Roberts will agree with me. Last week we had an editorial in the newspaper saying this is a piggy farm bill, we are spending too much money. I mentioned this last Friday. I asked my staff to make up a chart.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, how much time do we have on our side?

Mr. HARKIN. I assume the amendment is the same as was filed on Friday; is that right?

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the assistant majority leader for his kind words and his observations on this farm bill. It is obvious now to all--those in the press, any objective observer--what has been going on here in the Senate, that there is a stall tactic going on. There is no doubt in my mind anymore. Earlier I thought we were just going to have our votes and have our debate and move on. Now it looks as though, for whatever reason, there is politics being played here. It is just a darn shame that our farmers and our ranchers and our people in rural America and in our small towns are being held hostage to a game of politics this late in the year on this farm bill. I have been through a lot of farm bills in 27 years. I have been through three in the Senate in 17 years. Again, I believe this bill came out of committee with more bipartisan votes than any bill that has ever come out of the Agriculture Committee to the Senate floor. Every single title of this bill was voted on by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously, except for one title, the commodities title. That got bipartisan support. The Senator from Arkansas voted for that. I knew we were going to have to come on the floor and probably have debate and amendments on the commodities title. I understood that. I said that when the bill was reported out of committee. But I congratulated the Agriculture Committee for acting in a bipartisan fashion on the bill. As the Presiding Officer knows, we had tough negotiations. This is a big country. There is a lot of different agriculture. My agriculture in Iowa is different than the agriculture in Georgia or in Arkansas or in California or in Oregon or in Maine. So we had to try to keep this in balance. We had to try to balance all these interests. It was hard work, but we did it. I did not do it. We did it. Republicans and Democrats did it on the Agriculture Committee. We did it together. I cannot say enough about the working relationship that we had with Senator Lugar and his staff in working out all these different titles on research, on trade, on conservation, on nutrition, and all these things. Maybe we did not always agree, but we recognized that you cannot always agree on everything. We worked it out. We worked it out to the point where we had a comprehensive, well-balanced bill passed out of committee. Again, I knew we were going to have some votes on the floor on commodities. That is fair game. But now I see all this other stuff happening now. Now it is becoming clear to me, as we go toward the end of the year, that, for whatever reason, the leadership on the Republican side of the aisle does not want a farm bill out of the Senate before we leave here. Now, hope springs eternal. If we could get cloture tomorrow, and if we could wrap up the farm bill tomorrow night, on Wednesday--I talked to Congressman Combest, who is the chairman of the Agriculture Committee on the House side. I said: If we get it done, can we go to conference? He said he is ready. As soon as we get it done, we go to conference. Can we finish it before we get out of here? I assume we are going to get out of here this weekend. I hope. It is probably unlikely now, but at least we would start. And the farmers and ranchers of this country, and the people in rural America, would know we were committed, we passed the bill, we got it out of here, and we are in conference. Even if we couldn't finish the conference by Friday or Saturday, it would mean, I say to my friend from Nevada, that our staffs in the Senate and the House--Republican staff and Democratic staff--in early January, before we come back here, could begin to work all these things out before we have to go to conference. When we come back on the 23rd of January, we could have it just about wrapped up. Maybe there would be a few final things in conference. But we could get the bill passed and get it to the President by the end of January. If we do not pass the bill in the Senate before we leave, it will not be on the President's desk before the end of January. I will tell you something else. It will not be on the President's desk before the end of February, if we do not finish this bill in the Senate this week. So for those who talk all the time about certainty for our farmers and for our bankers and for our lenders, and people who have to come in and get the money they need, I say to my friend from the South, you need it before we need it in the Midwest. Your farmers are in the field before ours. And their lenders and their bankers want to know, with certainty, what is out there. I say to my friend from Nevada, if we do not finish the bill in the Senate before we leave here, and our staffs cannot work on it to get to conference, and work out all these things so that when we come back on the 23rd, the President will not have this bill, that means we will still be on the farm bill when we come back here on the 23rd, and then it is ``Katie bar the door.'' You think you have amendments now? You wait until we come back here on the 23rd. We will have 200 amendments or more. I will say it one more time so I am absolutely clear. If this bill is not passed in the Senate before we leave here, the President will not have it on his desk before the end of February. We will be lucky to have it by March. Then, if that is not enough, we are going to have January estimates coming out of OMB. It is going to show that we are going to slide even further into deficit spending. And then guess what has happened to our $73.5 billion that we have over the next 10 years. Kiss it good-bye. Now go home and tell your farmers how you stopped this bill in the Senate, and now we have less money for our farmers and people in rural America because it was stopped before we could get out of here at the end of the year. That is what is at stake. So I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, who are slowing this down: You are playing a dangerous game. You may think you are getting me. You may think you are getting Majority Leader Daschle. But you are getting the farmers. You may be shooting at us, but the bullets are hitting the farmers and ranchers of America. They are not hitting us, not at all. We have done our job. We pulled this bill together. This is a good bill. It is a good bill for America. It is a balanced bill. Am I saying it is perfect? Of course it is not perfect. If I could write the farm bill by myself, I would put it all in Iowa. Then it would be perfect. It is a balanced bill. I understand that my friend from Arkansas has just filed an amendment which is the House-passed farm bill. The House passed its bill. He wants to offer the House bill. That way we don't even need to have a conference. It just goes to the President. Of course, that is the bill the President said was unsatisfactory. If the House bill were to pass, it means we don't have a conference. That is the end of it. It undoes all the hard work we did, all of the hours that the occupant of the Chair and I and Republicans working together, Senator Lugar, his staff, all of us working together to bring a balanced bill together. Why are we Senators? If all we want is what the House does, why are we Senators? Why do we spend this time? As a Senate and as Senators, we do tend to look at things in a broader perspective. We have been Members of the House, most of us here. We tend to take a broader perspective. That is what this bill does, it is broader based. It is for all of the country. The House bill doesn't do enough for conservation. There is no energy title in it. This is a bill we ought to be proud of. We have an energy title for the first time ever in a farm bill, we have an energy title to promote ethanol and soy diesel and biomass and wind, all of the different forms of energy--methane. That is in this bill. It is not in the House bill. So we just throw that out the window, too. Farmers want different markets. They want an energy provision. They want to know that we are going to start promoting ethanol more than we ever have in the past. If you vote for the House bill, kiss it goodbye. I say to my friends who are thinking of voting for the House bill, they ought to think again. Take a look--I say to every Senator here-- add up, look at it first economically. Add up what happens to your State in the next 5 years under the committee-passed bill and under the House bill. I will wager that every single State represented in this Chamber will do better overall under the committee bill than under the House-passed bill economically, in terms of commodities and everything else. Add them all up, conservation payments, energy payments, all those things, add them all up.

Mr. HARKIN. Hope springs eternal. I will not give up. I will not quit. I will never give up in trying to get the best deal possible for all the farmers of this country. I don't care how long we have to stay here, how late we have to stay here. I will fight to the last day, to the last breath to get this bill out of here and get it out of the Senate because it is best for America and it is best for our farmers.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I object.