Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent there now be a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. HARKIN

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 I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the assistant majority leader for yielding, and I thank him for responding to some of the statements that were made over the weekend. I did not watch any of the Sunday morning shows, but I read the papers this morning. I saw that Vice President Cheney had referred to our majority leader, Senator Daschle, as an obstructionist, obstructing the stimulus bill. I am delighted the Senator from Nevada has clearly pointed out that no one on this side is obstructing anything. We have been more than willing to work with the other side on a number of items, but it almost seems to this Senator that their definition of obstructionism is ``our way or the highway.'' If we do not do it all how the President or how the Vice President wants or how the Republicans want, then we are obstructionists. We ought to work together across party lines, get bipartisan agreements, and move ahead. It is not this side that has been obstructing anything. We have wanted to move ahead with legislation. Take the farm bill--and I will have more to say about it this afternoon. We have been trying to get some time agreements. A request was proposed by our staff earlier that we have a time agreement and that all first-degree amendments at least be laid down by tomorrow afternoon. It was objected to on the Republican side, not on this side. Everyone knew the farm bill was going to be up. It was laid down last week. Yet they are objecting to having some meaningful debate. No one wants to cut off amendments, but at least we can have some amendments laid down, have time agreements, and debate them. Second, on the stimulus package, I think the Senator from Nevada is right. I think they are protesting too much on the other side. I smell a little bit of a rat someplace because I have been hearing from my Governor in Iowa, and I have heard from other people and other Governors from around the United States about what bad shape their economies are in right now and how their legislatures will be meeting in January. Their budget situations look very dire. They are cutting expenses; they are cutting education; they are cutting other programs around the States. They have looked at the proposed Republican stimulus bill with all of the tax cuts, and they have now begun to figure out what that is going to mean in the States and how the State budgets are going to be impacted by these proposed tax cuts the Republicans have proposed in the stimulus package. A lot of States are saying: Don't give us so much of this ``help'' because the tax cuts you are putting in there are going to help a lot of the large corporations, a lot of the wealthiest in our country, but at the same time it is going to take money out of our States at a time during the recession when our States can ill afford it. There is some feedback. Of course, our friends on the other side of the aisle are a little bit in a bind. They promised their big-wig supporters--the big companies and the big corporations--all these tax cuts they were going to get for them, and even though they want to deliver, they cannot because they are going to hurt a lot of the Republican Governors and Democratic Governors, too, in the State budgets. Maybe our friends are caught in a little bit of a bind, promising too much to the large corporations and the wealthy of this country, and then finding out what the impact is going to be on our States. What they have come up with is not a stimulus package. It is simply a tax relief package for the biggest and wealthiest in our country. That is not stimulus at all. If they want to sit down, negotiate, talk about it, and work out agreements, that is the spirit of this place and that is what we ought to be doing. To say it is their way or no way, and we say we want to work it out, and they say we are being obstructionist--the American people understand that. They understand we are not being obstructionists. Talk about obstructionism, try this one on for size. We are now engaged in a conference with the House on the reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education bill. For years, people on both sides of the aisle--I will not point to one side or the other--people on both sides of the aisle have been saying we need to meet our Federal commitment to special education. The agreement the Federal Government made 26 years ago was that the Federal Government would pick up at least 40 percent of the average per pupil cost of educating kids with disabilities. Twenty-six years ago, the Federal Government said that. Today our commitment is at about 15 percent. This is the single biggest issue in every school district in America--the funding for special education. The Senate adopted an amendment offered by me and by Senator Hagel from Nebraska that would put us on the pathway of fully funding special education over 6 years by taking it off the appropriations side and putting it on the mandatory side. We are now in conference negotiations. The National Governors' Association, headed by a Republican Governor from Michigan, signed a letter, supported by every Governor in the United States, saying they supported the Senate's position of full funding special education. The National School Boards Association, the National PTA, the National Education Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures--38 State legislatures have already passed resolutions supporting this full funding. The only reason we do not have 50 is because some of them were not meeting this year after we adopted it. Wait until January. All the legislatures are saying it is time the Federal Government stepped up and did its part in special education. Here is the catch: The White House, the administration, has said no, they will not agree with the Senate position on funding for special education. So we had our vote on it. The House voted against it. We voted for it. Okay. What is to be done then? Usually in a conference, negotiations are started and compromise is attempted. So we offered to the House a compromise, and the House said forget it, they are not going to compromise. They do not want to fund special education one more nickel than what they have done in the bill. It is not coming from the House side. It is coming down from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. It is coming from the White House. It is the White House that is stonewalling. So talk about obstructionism, that is obstructionism when the White House refuses to negotiate or reach any kind of compromise with the Senate on full funding for special education. So I think before the Vice President and others start throwing around words about obstructionism, they ought to pick up the mirror and look at themselves, especially when it comes to funding for special education. So I thank the Senator from Nevada for pointing out the fact we have not been obstructing anything on this side, and for pointing out this so-called stimulus package is nothing more than the old ``trickle down.'' If those at the top are given to it, some of it may trickle down on the rest of us. We have tried that before and it has never worked; it will not work this time either. Yes, we do need to do something about unemployment compensation. The biggest stimulus we could have right now is getting health care for our children and health care for people who do not have health care coverage right now. That is the biggest stimulus we could give to our economy and help people at the same time. I am going to wrap up my statement, and then I am going to talk about the farm bill, another stimulus. We are in dire straits. Rural America is hurting. We need a farm bill. When farmers know a bill is coming, they are borrowing money; they are buying new equipment; they are doing the things that stimulate the kind of growth and the kind of manufacturing we need in this country. So I sure hope we will not hear any more of this blame game, trying to blame someone for being obstructionist when all we are trying to do is work in a bipartisan fashion, as we should be doing, to reach the best decisions for the American people. So when they say ``obstructionism,'' they say it is our way or the highway. To me, that is obstructionism. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Was this cleared on both sides?

Mr. HARKIN. I have to object if it has not been cleared on both sides. Without that assurance, I have to object.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. How about a half hour of time evenly divided?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to engage in a brief colloquy with the chairman of the subcommittee. There is an important project in the Iowa National Guard to bring unique networking and secure storage capabilities to bear on distance learning and simulations, including real-time simulations at multiple sites. The Consolidated Interactive Virtual Information Center has taken on new immediacy since September 11 along with the National Guard as a whole. It has been used to train Guard members in protecting our airports and could play a critical role in homeland defense. I am pleased that the Appropriations Committee has recommended this project for funding within National Guard distance learning accounts, but I wanted to clarify the intent. Is it your expectation that the CIVIC project will receive sufficient funding for a second year of development, and a level at least equal to last year's?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first of all, I wonder if the Senator from Oklahoma actually has looked at the amendment at the desk by the Senator from Illinois. I think he has confused it with a bill that was introduced earlier. This is an appropriations measure. It has been checked with the Parliamentarian. It is an appropriate limitation on the release of funds. This is not a legislative matter; this is an appropriations matter under our rules. Since the bill contains appropriations matters for the Department of Transportation and the FAA, it is entirely germane to this bill that are impacted by the text. Furthermore, if my friend from Oklahoma is worried about chewing up a lot of time, I am certain that my friend from Illinois would agree to a time limitation on the amendment. I ask unanimous consent that we have a 1-hour time limit right now evenly divided on the amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, after many visits over the years to the animal disease facilities at Ames, Iowa, I am all too aware of the very great need to modernize them, providing the security, safety, and capability to conduct necessary work that will both protect animal agriculture and human health as well. The Appropriations Committee concurred when it approved the amendment proposed by Senator Byrd that provided very necessary funds for those facilities those at Plum Island. We do not know when a major emergency will be upon us for which these facilities could be crucial. Hopefully, we will have them built when that time comes. In order to maximize the likelihood that will be the case, I believe it is clear that the Secretary should do all that she can to accelerate the design and the construction of the Ames, Iowa facilities, and the design of facilities at Plum Island. Clearly, to the extent that it is prudent, the authorities that are available should be used in the Federal Acquisition Regulations to accelerate the planning, design of the entire modernization plan, and the construction of those facilities for which funds are available. I also expect that the Department will provide appropriate support to maximize the speed of planning design and construction, moving to the construction phases as soon as possible for this important project. Certainly, the portion of the design for which construction funds are available should receive the highest priority.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to engage in a brief colloquy with the chairman of the subcommittee. We are all too aware of the terrible terrorist threats we face and of the difficulty in predicting and assessing these threats. I have been especially concerned about possible threats to the U.S. food supply and about our lack of protections and monitoring of our food. Project Alpha is a proactive approach using advanced technologies, expert systems, and thinking ``outside the box'' in order to predict, assess, and analyze terrorist threats. I am proud that Iowa State University and the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, IA, would play a key role in this project. I hope the committee will open to the use of funds in this bill, and I ask for the chairman's support for implementation of Project Alpha and its National Decision Assessment Immersion Center, with emphasis on protecting the U.S. food supply.

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Oklahoma, everybody makes that argument when there is something they do not like. But the fact is, this is germane to this bill. There are provisions in this bill that deal with the FAA and the DOT. And this is vital, I say to my friend from Oklahoma. So there is no point of order that lies against this. My friend from Oklahoma knows full well that if we wait and try to do this through Commerce, or through other committees, it is next year and beyond. We cannot wait any longer. When the heart stops beating, the body dies. When O'Hare gets plugged up, we all die a little bit in this country--every city, especially in the upper Midwest. So we have this great agreement. I do not know what the problem is. This is something that the city of Chicago and the State of Illinois basically are going to be doing. All we are saying is, we want them to continue to develop this plan and execute it. That is all we are saying. We want it to move ahead. So I say to my friend from Oklahoma, I did not even want to talk this long. I would be glad to move it along right now. But we do not want to delay it. We want to get it done. The amendment before us simply provides that the Secretary of Transportation work with the FAA to make sure this locally developed and executed plan in Illinois moves ahead expeditiously. It is in the interest of Chicago, it is in the interest of Illinois, it is in the interest of my State of Iowa, the upper Midwest, and this Nation. We cannot afford to wait any longer. I urge us to move rapidly on this, adopt it, and move ahead. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Again, it is not that the proponents of this side to use up a lot of time. I think it is a clear-cut case. My friend from Arizona said we haven't had hearings on it. My friend from Arizona chaired the hearing in Illinois in Chicago on this very subject in Illinois. There has been a hearing on it. We cannot afford to wait any longer. I first started speaking about the congestion at O'Hare and the need for new runways and changing that airport in 1991, 10 years ago. A lot of others were talking about it at that time. Senator Durbin has been on this ever since he was in the House of Representatives. This is not something new. It has been around a long time. If it is true, as has been said, that transportation is the veins and arteries of our free enterprise system in America, surely O'Hare is the heart pump. When O'Hare backs up, everything backs up. Airports back up all over the country. Delivery systems back up all over the country. What happens at O'Hare affects every community in America. Quite frankly, the situation at O'Hare is getting to be to the point where if you have one bad weather pattern in Chicago, and you have sunshine in the rest of the United States, you might as well have a hurricane in every city if it is bad in Chicago. It will back up everything all over America. I bet that almost every Senator who flies anywhere has had the experience of sitting on the runway and the weather looks good. The pilot comes on and says: We can't take off because there is a weather delay in Chicago. And you are waiting to fly to Minneapolis. That is what happens at O'Hare today and what is happening in our country. At O'Hare, there are plenty of runways. But because they are crisscrossing each other, and because they are too close together, you cannot have simultaneous takeoffs and landings at a number of different places. And, in bad weather, you cannot use both parallel runways if you have adverse weather conditions because they are to close together. So O'Hare airport needs to be redesigned. They need to have parallel runways that are wide enough apart to be operated in poor weather; they need to get rid of the crisscross runways that are there right now. There has been some contention in the past between the city of Chicago and the State about how to proceed on this. Some of us, led by Senator Durbin, have been pushing them to reach an agreement, to get together. This is a State and a local matter, but even though it is a State and local matter, O'Hare affects the entire United States. So we have been asking them to get together and work it out. They did. I commend Mayor Daley of the city of Chicago and Governor Ryan of the State of Illinois for working together to come up with this agreement. Now that we have this agreement, it is time to move ahead aggressively to make sure it is implemented and that we move ahead without any further delay. That is what the amendment offered by the Senator from Illinois does. It makes sure we move ahead now that we have this agreement between the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago. With this agreement, and with the changes that have been agreed to in this agreement at O'Hare, with new parallel runways, weather delays will be reduced, it has been reported, by over 90 percent. The economic impact of less delays at O'Hare on this country will be tremendous. The economic impact if we do not do it will also be tremendous in the negative. At a time when we are looking at getting out of a recession, and further looking over the horizon for the next 10 years, any delays that we make at O'Hare means we are going to affect the entire economy of this country. That is not an overstatement. That is not just this Senator from Iowa saying it. You can look at report after report after report on the transportation system in America and how it affects our economy; and it all comes right back to O'Hare Airport. That is how important it is. This agreement that was reached has been in the making for a long time. It was not something that just happened in one day. This has been ongoing literally for years, and more recently over the last year. But now that this agreement has been reached, why dawdle, why delay it any longer? This amendment is not just a win for Chicago, this is not just a Chicago thing, and it is not just for Illinois. This is good for South Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska--all the Midwest and the nation. I can tell you, we have cities in Iowa that need access to O'Hare: Sioux city, Mason City, Fort Dodge and Burlington. Our airports with access, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Dubuque need more reliable service. The people who live in my State, in order to transit to someplace else, far to often have a very difficult time getting there because they have to go through Chicago. If this change can take place, and we can modify O'Hare as under the agreement, this opens up O'Hare for our smaller airports in the Midwest to feed into, so people can travel more freely. It opens up these small cities for commercial and business travelers so businesses in those communities can have better access to their markets and their suppliers in other parts of the country. This is not just an issue for Chicago and for Illinois and our nation. I have not mentioned the international aspects of this. There is a huge international transit that comes in and out of Chicago at O'Hare. That is also backed up when Chicago has adverse weather, for example. And certainly, a lot of our people in the Midwest travel overseas on business, and there are people in other countries coming to the Midwest for business purposes. They get backed up. How does that affect us? Well, they may say: Maybe we want to make a contract with a business. Why do it in the Midwest? We cannot get afford the possibility of delays because O'Hare is always plugged up. This is an economic necessity. It is vital to the economy of the upper Midwest. So when the Senator from Oklahoma says that somehow we can put it off and put it off, maybe a lot of his people in Oklahoma do not use O'Hare.

Mr. HARKIN. I yield for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Parliamentary inquiry: The Senator would like to know exactly what the situation is at this time. This Senator has been waiting to speak on the amendment offered by Senator Stevens. What is the present situation on the floor?

Mr. HARKIN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, we are talking about just another part of the defense of our country. If we think of what is happening in Afghanistan, if we found out our troops were ill-trained, that our radar was out of date, and they were short of ammunition, we would have hearings. We would call in the experts, we would listen to them, we would find out how much they needed to make sure our troops were trained, to make sure our radar worked, and to make sure they had enough ammunition, and we would supply it. That is exactly what we did for this bill. We brought in the witnesses. We heard from the experts. We asked: What do we need to protect the people of this country in terms of a bioterrorist attack? That fell under the jurisdiction of the subcommittee which I chair. Senator Specter and I had four hearings. Senator Stevens and Senator Byrd attended those hearings. We had good testimony. What they came up with was the expert judgment of what we needed to protect our people against a bioterrorist attack. If I put it in military terms in terms of bioterrorism, our troops are ill-trained, our radar is out of date, and we don't have enough ammunition. For example, we had testimony that we needed to get our small pox vaccine manufactured and deployed. This bill includes $829 million to do that. The substitute amendment would take that down by $267 million. We would cut local and State public health preparedness by over $650 million. This is our radar system. These are the people, if an attack happens, who will pick it up immediately and keep it from spreading. We had $1.15 billion. The amendment, the substitute, only has $500 million. There are cuts for CDC for the lab capacity. These are things we need to protect our people. We heard from the experts. We got their testimony. We made a judgment call as to what was needed to protect us from a bioterrorist attack. We had $3.9 billion--it was $3.3 billion for public health and $600 million in agriculture, for a total of $3.9. The substitute amendment only leaves $2.3 billion. Just as we would not want to shortchange our troops in the field overseas, we don't want to shortchange the troops we have at home. Our public health officials, our local hospital administrators, the laboratories, the manufacturers of the small pox vaccine, make sure they have the equipment they need to protect our people.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I appreciate the overwhelming support that we had from the Senate for moving to the Agriculture bill. However, with the rules that we are operating under, that was just a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed. Now I understand that we have 30 hours, under the rules of the Senate, before we have a vote on the motion to proceed. With that overwhelming vote on cloture, I hope we might collapse that 30 hours. There is no need for that 30 hours. We might as well have the vote on the motion to proceed and get to the bill and let's start having amendments and move this bill expeditiously. I see no reason we have to have 30 hours of debate right now. We ought to move to the bill and let's have the amendments. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we should vote for cloture. Let us get on with the farm bill. Let us have the amendments. Let us have time agreements. Let us move on. Let us send a signal to rural America that we are going to be there for them in their hour of need. I ask Senators to vote for cloture. I yield back the remainder of my time. Cloture Motion

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from North Dakota for his kind words, and I respond in kind by thanking our distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee for being not only a valuable member of the Agriculture Committee, but for his leadership. The Budget Committee allotted us $73.5 billion. I also thank him for continuing to point out the dire state of agriculture today. When I first spoke, I pointed out that if you discount the added money the Congress is providing every year for agriculture, our net income right now to farmers is 54 percent of what it was in 1996. The leader of the Budget Committee has continually brought to our attention that we have to make sure we get this bill done this year to provide for the farm economy of this country the amount of money that was allocated to us because our farmers and our rural communities need that money. Rural America is in trouble. Thank God we have good advocates such as Senator Conrad from North Dakota who fights for rural America, who understands we do not have as many people in rural America as in the big cities in California, New York, and other States. The work people do in rural America is what keeps this country going. We cannot afford any longer to have them on that downward track that the Senator from North Dakota pointed out on his chart. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for being a great leader on our Budget Committee and for providing these funds and making sure we meet our obligations. I thank him very much. I yield whatever time he may need to the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I look forward to the vote on cloture. I hope it will be an overwhelming vote. I hope we can move on this bill right away, today. Time is wasting, as they say. The clock is ticking. We are here. We are in Washington. We are ready to do business. I believe we have a good bill. I believe we have a very good, well- balanced farm bill. It is a 5-year farm bill. We have reported it out of committee. We are ready to bring it to the floor and have it open for amendments that Senators might offer. It is a 5-year bill. It is a comprehensive bill. I think it provides greater improvements to the farm commodity and income protection programs. We are strong on conservation, rural economic development. Agricultural trade and research has a good provision. I will have more to say about my distinguished ranking member, Senator Lugar, and the great work he has done on agricultural research. We have nutrition assistance programs, we have a new title dealing with energy, and of course credit titles and forestry titles. It is a comprehensive farm bill. I know a lot of the press tends to focus only on commodities. Commodities, obviously, are an important part of the farm bill. However, this farm bill covers other areas across the United States which I will talk more about. I thank the ranking Republican member of our committee, Senator Lugar, former distinguished chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. I very much enjoyed working with him and his staff, developing this bill. I can say without any hesitation that we have had a very high level of cooperation and a bipartisan working relationship and collaboration in writing this bill. In fact, all but one of the titles of this bill represents a bipartisan agreement. All titles of this bill passed in our committee with bipartisan votes. That shows we did, in fact, work closely together. We did have a vote on the commodity title and even there, there was a bipartisan vote. To be sure, it was not the same as on the other titles, but we voted to uphold the committee's commodity title. Again, as an indication of the broad-based support that we had in the committee for the bill, even though there were some who may have wanted to change the commodity title we reported the bill out on a voice vote, which is in practical effect unanimous. Let me point out the legislation is within our committee's budget limitations for the new farm bill. We were allowed by the Budget Committee $7.35 billion for fiscal 2002, and $73.5 billion for the 10 years, above the baseline. The bill has been scored within those limitations. I hope we can move forward and work our way through this bill. As I said, we are ready to consider amendments. I am hopeful--and I say this with all due respect to Senators. I know people may want to have amendments to this that they feel strongly about. I myself in the past have felt strongly about amendments to farm bills when they have come to the floor. But the important point is to move the bill forward and not slow down the farm bill. We should have amendments, debate them in a timely fashion, vote on them, and move on. I am hopeful we can reach meaningful time agreements on the amendments that will be offered to this bill. Of course, I believe it is a good bill as it came out of the committee. But I understand there will be some who may want to offer amendments. Why act now? Why not wait until next year. We have heard some talk about waiting until next year for a farm bill. Frankly, farmers around the country need to know what the farm program is going to be, and they need to know soon. A lot of farmers are going to be going to the bankers right after the first of the year to get the money they need for their crops, to put in their crops. What is the banker going to say? ``What is the program going to be? What can you count on?'' How are the farmers going to fill out the paperwork to go into the banker to get the money they need to plant crops if they have no idea what the program is going to be? That is why it is so important that we finish this legislation and give a clear signal to the agricultural community and the agricultural credit community just what we are going to have for next year. The other reason is--and I will be repeating this data over and over again as we go through the debate on the farm bill--that there really is a crisis in rural America, since soon after the 1996 farm bill was passed. In 1996, we had net farm income of $55 billion nationally. Since that time, net farm income has fallen to an average of $46.3 billion, a decline of nearly 16 percent. Had it not been for the sizeable Government payments from the farm bill and the additional payments that we in the Congress have made in that period, which includes about $30 billion in additional emergency payments over those years, if we had not had those payments, net farm income would have fallen to less than $30 billion on average. Thus, had it not been for the Congress coming in every year on an ad hoc basis, the market-generated net returns to farmers would have been only 54 percent of what we had in 1996. That is why it is so critical we move ahead and get this legislation passed. Commodity programs are only part of the reason to move ahead. Several of USDA's critical conservation programs are simply out of money. The Wetlands Reserve Program, the Farmland Protection Program, and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program are all out of money. I say to those who are interested in conservation and want to promote and provide for conservation, we need the money now, not next year. That is because many of these programs have to be funded on a continual basis. Take the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, for example. That is not something that should be just stopped and then started. The Wetlands Reserve Program is not a program that can be kept in abeyance for 9 or 12 months, and then just be started again without real negative consequences. These are conservation programs that need continual infusions of money for the protection of our endangered lands and endangered species. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program--the EQIP--to defray conservation cost of crop and livestock producers, is far short of the resources needed. It is not out of money just now, but the funding is inadequate for the need out there. This bill substantially increases funding. However, if we do not pass the legislation soon, the USDA will not be able to carry out the conservation programs adequately during the present fiscal year. Also, the bill will help provide very important and much needed new help in the areas of rural economic development, agricultural trade, research, credit, nutrition, and renewable energy. So we need to move ahead without delay. At some point later on I will take the time to go through the bill and talk about the different commodity and other programs covered in the bill, all the various aspects that are in the bill, but I do not believe that is necessary right now. We are coming up to a cloture vote. I basically wanted to take the floor to say why it is so necessary we move ahead and not delay this bill any longer. We have a huge decrease in net farm income. We have to address that. We have to let the bankers and the farmers know what kind of program they can count on next year. But, again, if we do not move this bill soon, farmers will be going to the banks and seeking credit for the crops they are going to be putting in without knowing what to expect in the farm program. That is why we need to move on this legislation right now. In addition, we need to move on the bill to make sure we keep the funding stream going for our necessary conservation programs. Mr. President, I want to again publicly thank my good friend and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Senator Lugar. He was chairman for more than six years. He was a great steward of the committee. He did a great job guiding, directing, and leading the Agriculture Committee. I am proud to follow in his footsteps as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. I again thank him and his staff for all the working relationships that we have had in developing this farm bill and in all the other work we have been doing on the Agriculture Committee. I want to thank Senator Lugar for that great working relationship. With that, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we have 1 hour equally divided; is that correct?

Mr. HARKIN. Net farm income.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. HARKIN. I withhold it.