Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank my friend from Minnesota. I also thank him for his help in putting this package together. The Senator is right. We started this spring, in the emergency supplemental appropriations bill, trying to add some money. We got beat on a nearly straight party-line vote. All but one Republican voted no; Democrats voted yes. We then came back, as the Senator from Minnesota knows, and tried it again in the subcommittee on this bill. We again lost on a straight party-line vote. Now we are on the floor. I will say we are making some progress. At least now our friends on the other side recognize there is a problem. At least they are willing to address it somewhat. The amendment that the Senator from Mississippi sent to the desk is better than nothing, but it is not going to do enough to help get our farmers through this winter. It is only a little more than half of what is needed.

Mr. HARKIN. I yield for a question.

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator is absolutely correct. The Freedom to Farm bill was premised that we would put farmers on the free market. As the Senator from Kansas said, they would have high net income for the next several years. However, Freedom to Farm ripped the safety net out from agriculture. As I pointed out, our exports are up. We are exporting more of our key commodities, but there is no price. The safety net has been taken out from underneath agriculture. Farmers all across America recognize that Freedom to Farm has been a total and absolute disaster when it comes to protecting farm income, and it has to be changed. That is why the first thing we need to do is get the emergency package, but then we have to address the end-of-the-line problem of Freedom to Farm.

Mr. HARKIN. As I read the debate and all the talk on the Freedom to Farm bill when it passed, the idea was that we would transition out of farm programs with AMTA payments.

Mr. HARKIN. I am delighted to yield, and I want to thank the Senator from North Dakota with whom I serve on the agriculture appropriations subcommittee. I appreciate the very strong help in putting this package together. It has been a very difficult year for farmers in North Dakota as well as Iowa and I can say without fear of contradiction the Senator from North Dakota has been one of the instrumental people in actually putting this package together. I appreciate the support.

Mr. HARKIN. That is the amount of money we specifically provide in the amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. That is the amount of money provided for those items.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the end of that vote, when we return to this bill, the Senator from Iowa be recognized to complete his statement. It will not take very long to complete my statement.

Mr. HARKIN. I answer to my friend from Mississippi that all of the items in our amendment are direct appropriations for next year. The only items that are not are the Cotton Step Two Export Program, and that is scored by CBO at $439 million for 3 years, and the adjustment to the payment limitations.

Mr. HARKIN. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, today all across America most people are doing pretty well. Unemployment is at its lowest rate in years. The stock market keeps going up. Our gross national product is going up at a great rate. As we now know, we have a surplus for the first time in almost 30 years in the Federal budget. We just had a lengthy debate last week on what we are going to do with that surplus. Our friends on the other side want to take most of it and give it, through a tax break, to people mostly in the upper-income brackets. If you just looked at that, you would think we shouldn't be worried too much about what is happening in America; things look pretty good. Out of the glare of Wall Street, far from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, sort of silently and quietly, American farmers and ranchers are losing their businesses. They are at the end of their rope. Our small towns and communities that dot our countryside are facing a bleak winter, with the prospect that things will get even worse after the harvest is in and the snow falls. The situation facing American agriculture today--according to bankers, farm economists, and agricultural economists from many of our universities--is the worst it has been since the Great Depression. We have to respond to that. We have to respond in a way that is meaningful. That is what our first-degree amendment does. I listened to my friend from Mississippi describe this amendment. I guess my response basically would be, ``Nice try.'' Would it help farmers? Would the Republican amendment help farmers? Why, sure. Any little bit would help. Does it get to the underlying problem? Does it really help get our farmers through this winter and into next year? The answer is no. It is hopelessly too short. While I appreciate the effort by my friends on the Republican side to come up with a last-minute amendment to perhaps put out a smokescreen on what is really happening in agriculture and what we need to do to respond to the crisis, it is a nice effort, but it really doesn't do it. Our hard-working, dedicated, progressive farmers and ranchers across this country don't just need a little bit of a handout that the Republican amendment will give them. What they need is a package of help that will not only get them through this summer and this fall but through next winter so they can get back on their feet again next year. You will hear a lot of talk about how one of the problems is our lack of exports. I just want to point out that even though the United States has a trade deficit, one sector that earns us money and that has a positive trade balance is agriculture. But there are those who would have you believe it is because of the lack of exports that our farmers are in such bad shape. Here is the chart that puts the lie to that. For wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans--the major commodities we export--the exports are fully up this year over what they were in the previous couple of years. We are exporting more. If we are exporting more, what is the problem? The problem is, there is no price and farmers aren't getting anything for their commodities. Here is what has happened to soybeans just in my State of Iowa since the fall of 1997: Basically about a 45-percent decrease in the value of that crop. The same is true with corn. There have been precipitous drops just in the last year and a half. It is not a lack of total exports. It is a lack of the money and the price that farmers are getting. While we need to get an emergency package of money out to farmers, we need to do it now. We also have to be about changing the farm policy. We cannot go on another year under the Freedom to Farm bill and be back here again next year looking at another package of several billion dollars. The Freedom to Farm bill has failed miserably. It has failed our Nation. It has failed our farmers. It has failed our rural communities. I have an article that was in the Kansas paper back in 1995 when we passed the Freedom to Farm bill by my friend from Kansas, Senator Roberts. He said: Finally, Freedom to Farm enhances the farmer's total economic situation. In fact, the bill results in the highest net farm income over the next seven years of any proposal before Congress. I hate to say it to my friend from Kansas, but net farm income in key farming areas is down dramatically. For the principal field crops, net farm income is going to be down about 29 percent this year from the average of the last 5 years. That is why we are facing one of the greatest depressions in agriculture since the 1930s. That is why halfhearted measures are not going to work. That is why the bill we have come up with really does address the magnitude of the problem. It is deep, and it is a very large problem and one that has to be addressed efficiently. The amendment that Senator Daschle and I, along with Senator Dorgan, Senator Kerrey, Senator Johnson, Senator Conrad, Senator Baucus, Senator Durbin, Senator Wellstone, Senator Lincoln, and Senator Sarbanes have just sent to the desk provides for a total of $10.79 billion to farmers and ranchers for this next year. There is a great gulf of difference between what the Republicans have set up and what we are proposing. First, the Republicans are proposing that we send all of this money out in a direct payment to farmers; an AMTA payment, it is called, a market transition payment. Our payments go out in supplemental loan deficiency payments, which means they are based upon a farmer's production--what that farmer actually produced this year, not what they did 10 or 20 years ago. In that way, it is more fair and it is more direct to the actual farmers this year. We include $2.6 billion for disaster assistance. We include a number of other measures such as $212 million for emergency conservation. We have had a lot of floods and a lot of damages in a lot of States. We need to repair the damage to farm and ranch land and enhance our conservation. For emergency trade provision, we have $978 million for purchases of commodities for humanitarian assistance. We have people starving all over the world. We have a Public Law 480 food assistance program and related programs. Our bill provides about $1 billion to take the surplus food we have and send it around the world to starving people. The Republican proposal does not include that. We include money for emergency economic development for our rural towns, small towns, and communities that are hit hard. Our total package of $10.79 billion addresses the magnitude of the problem. It is that big. I say to the people who think $10.79 billion is a lot of money, we passed a tax break bill last week for $792 billion, most of which goes to upper-income people in this country. Very little will ever go to our farmers and our ranchers around America. This point in time is going to decide what happens to rural America this winter. That is why it is so important to act now. That is why it is so important that we get the money out that is needed--not some halfhearted measure in a way that doesn't address the real and devastating economic problems that farmers have all over America. I will have more to say about my amendment later.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I yield for a question.

Mr. HARKIN. I could not agree more. I would proffer this. If all we do is pass this emergency package, either this one or the scaled-down package of the Republicans, and we do nothing else, farmers are going to see the handwriting on the wall. If we do not change that Freedom to Farm bill, they are going to see it and they will say, I'm going to be right back where I am again next year. Farmers are going to say, I'm getting out. They will be leaving in droves. It will drive farmers out. In the State of Iowa, from April of 1998 to April of 1999, land prices in Central Iowa have gone down 11 percent already. The Governor of Iowa was at a meeting I held in Iowa this weekend. He said, when the legislature left 3 months ago, when they went out of session, they estimated the growth in revenues at 1.8 percent. It is now down to 1 percent. That is going to affect our schools and everything else in the State of Iowa. So the broader impacts on Iowa's economic health are already being felt. It is already happening. I have had people tell me if all we are going to do is put the money out there, it will help them some with their debts, it will help them get through the next few months, help them get through the harvest, but if we do not change the Freedom to Farm bill, they are out, they are not going to be there next year.

Mr. HARKIN. I yield.

Mr. HARKIN. In responding to my friend from Minnesota, I was meeting with farmers this week in Iowa talking about our emergency package. On more than one occasion the farmers got up and said: We appreciate what you are trying to do. We can sure use the money. But if all you are going to do is send out another check and we are going to have the Freedom to Farm bill again next year, it isn't going to work because we will be even deeper in the hole next year. They are begging Congress to change this policy. I tell my friend from Minnesota what I hear most often from them is they have to have a better price, they have to be able to market their grain more efficiently, and they need some limited kinds of conservation land idling program shorter than 10 years. The vast majority of farmers I talked to said we have to get our supply and demand in line. The only way we will get them in line anytime soon is if we have some land out of production. With short-term land retirement, something to take land out for conservation purposes for 2 years, or 3 years at the most, where they get some economic benefit for that, coupled with higher loan rates and the extension of the loan and storage payments, we can start to get some stability and get the farm economy back on track. This past weekend as well as on other Iowa visits, farmers are telling me if we don't change the underlying farm bill it will get worse next year.

Mr. HARKIN. About 15 minutes--perhaps not that long. Let me conclude my earlier remarks. Quite frankly, I find myself in a very uncomfortable position. This is extremely uncomfortable for me. I think the pending amendments are the ultimate statement on the failure of the current farm policy. Why do I say it is uncomfortable for me? Because I don't like it when farmers have to rely on government payments because they are not getting enough from the marketplace. I am uncomfortable with an amendment that provides above $10 billion in support for our farmers. I find myself extremely uncomfortable. That is why I view what we are doing here as part of a two-step process. First, we must get the emergency money; but second, we have to change the underlying failures of the Freedom to Farm bill or we will be right back where we are again next year, asking for billions more in emergency payments to deal with the crisis in the farm economy. Our farm policy now is based on cash payments. Now we are back here talking about even more cash payments. We are forced into this situation because the underlying farm policy is wrong. And that is how the Republicans' proposal is shaped. It is a stopgap gesture based on AMTA payments. So naturally, the larger farmers with the larger base acreages are going to get the most money. This policy goes against what government programs ought to be. Government programs ought to be for those who are in need. This amendment stands that principle on its head. The Republican proposal will give most of the money to the biggest farmers under the so-called AMTA payments. Our proposal offers a more equitable distribution by providing the assistance to producers who are actually on the farm right now and in relation to what they are growing now--not what they grew 20 or more years ago. That is a big difference between the two approaches. The Republicans' said they wanted to get rid of the old farm programs when they passed Freedom to Farm, but their AMTA type payments are based on that very same outdated base acreage and payment yield system that is decades old. And quite frankly, with the AMTA system, payments can go to someone who is not even trying to grow a crop and has not incurred those expenses. And the benefits of AMTA payments are too easily claimed by absentee landlords. They could be long gone and living in--Palm Beach, Miami, or retired in southern Texas or someplace else. Our proposal is designed to provide the money to real farmers who are actually farming and trying to grow crops. I might also add one other thing: We are facing some terrible disaster conditions around the country. I know out in the upper Midwest we have had floods and excessive moisture that have prevented planting, in the Dakotas for example, and we have had terrible floods and rainstorms in parts of Iowa. We are facing a tremendous drought on the eastern seaboard among the Atlantic coastal States where we also have farmers who are in dire straits. In our package, we have over $2 billion for disaster-related assistance. The Republican package has zero dollars to help farmers survive disasters, not for those on the Eastern seaboard suffering that terrible drought or others undergoing disasters. That is another big difference because these are truly farmers in need. They need help. Our bill has that help for them; the Republican bill doesn't. Those are the two major differences I see. I will have more to say tomorrow about the Freedom to Farm bill. Freedom to Farm had a lot of cheerleaders when it passed a few years ago, saying how great it would be. Those cheers ring hollow now. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Quite frankly, farmers are going broke. And they know it is a failure. It has not protected farm. We must change the underlying farm policy. We need to get loan rates up. We had a bipartisan group of State representatives and Senators from Iowa here last week, Republicans and Democrats. They had a proposal for us: Raise the loan rates, allow the Secretary of Agriculture to extend commodity loans and provide storage payments to farmers, all of which I support. I said: You are talking to the wrong person; you ought to talk to the backers of Freedom to Farm. Don't try to convince me, I am for it. We ought to raise the loan rates. We ought to provide for storage payments. We ought to extend the loans. I think that is what we will come back and try to do in September, the second part of our two-step process. The name Freedom to Farm reminds me of a conversation a little bit ago when it was asked, is there anything good about the bill. I said about the only thing good in the Freedom to Farm bill is the name ``freedom.'' But considering where the farm economy is now, I am reminded of the words in the Janis Joplin song. ``Freedom is just another word for nothin' left to lose.'' How accurate that is when it comes to the farm crisis. For our farmers, the word ``freedom'' in the Freedom to Farm bill, is just another word for ``nothin' left to lose.''

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the indulgence of my friend from Indiana. I know my friend wanted to engage in a little colloquy. I am sorry for holding him up. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I am not going to talk all night.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1454 and ask unanimous consent that Senator Kennedy and Senator Wellstone be added as cosponsors.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act, I move to waive the Congressional Budget Act for the consideration of amendment No. 1454, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, right now companies are changing pension plans. They are going from defined benefit plans to these cash balance plans. That is OK. This amendment doesn't stop that. But what is happening now is workers who have worked at these companies for sometimes 20 or 25 years have their pensions degraded. There are 5 to 7, and sometimes as many as 10, years when nothing is put into their pension plans. The younger workers are getting money paid into their pensions and the older workers are not. This amendment says that if they change pension plans they can not discriminate against the older workers, and the companies have to put into the older workers' pension accounts whatever they are putting into the younger workers' pension accounts so that we don't have this kind of wear away for 5 or 7 years when older workers are denied their pension benefits.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I will not talk that long. I thank the manager. Mr. President, I will talk about another motion I will have to recommit the bill with instructions tomorrow when it comes up. This has to do with funding for the National Institutes of Health. Just 2\1/2\ years ago, the Senate went on record, 98-0, committing to double the budget of the National Institutes of Health over 5 years. But this tax bill shortchanges America's health and reneges on the Senate's promise, by forcing cuts of up to 38 percent in discretionary health programs. Earlier this evening, my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, talked about NIH being the ``crown jewel'' of our Government. Indeed, I agree with him. It is. But we said we were going to double the budget. Yet now, because of this tax bill, we are going to be faced with huge cuts. We can't even get our appropriations bill on the floor because we are $8 billion to $10 billion below what we had last year, and yet we are going to give a big tax break to the wealthiest in our society. We have to invest in this medical research--Alzheimer's and arthritis to cancer, diabetes, and spinal cord injury. We are on the verge of breakthroughs in all of these areas. Now is not the time to back off; now is the time to invest in biomedical research. If we were able to just simply delay the onset of Alzheimer's in individuals by 5 years, the savings would be $50 billion a year. We would have no problems in Medicare if we just delayed the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years. My amendment is going to be very simple. It makes good on the promise the Senator made, 89-0, to double the NIH budget over 5 years. The amendment returns the tax bill to the Committee on Finance, with instructions that the committee report back to the full Senate within 3 days with an amendment to provide an additional $13 billion for the NIH over 5 years. Funding for this would be provided by reducing or delaying specific tax cuts in the bill, so long as those tax cuts that benefit moderate- or middle-income taxpayers are not reduced. Again, I commend this amendment. It is sponsored, again, by myself, Senator Kennedy, Senator Mikulski, and Senator Murray to again make good on our promise to make sure we put the necessary funding in biomedical research at the NIH. I yield to the manager, if the manager would like to have the time back. I will be glad to yield back whatever time I have remaining.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Montana for yielding. Mr. President, I will talk about the bill itself, but I also want to talk about an amendment that I intend to offer tomorrow, sponsored by myself, Senator Leahy, Senator Reid of Nevada, Senator Kennedy, and Senator Wellstone. It has to do with pensions. Current law prevents companies from reducing pension benefits which a worker has already earned. However, there is a new phenomenon going on. Companies are now changing to so-called cash balance plans which can save the companies millions of dollars in pension costs each year by allowing them to take a substantial cut out of their employees' pensions. Employees generally receive three kinds of benefits from working. They get direct wages, health benefits, and pensions. So reducing an employee's pension years after it is earned should be no more legal than denying a worker wages after the work has been performed. Under traditional defined benefit plans, the worker gets a pension based on the length of employment and the average pay of the last few years of service. The pension is based on a preset formula using those key factors rather than on the amount in an employee's pension account. Under some cash balance plans, payments to workers do not start until the value of their pension has reduced to the lower level of the cash balance plan. This is a term of art that they call wearaway. In fact, under a number of cash balance plans, some older workers receive no pension benefit contributions for as long as 5 or more years, while younger workers, workmates working right alongside them who started under the cash balance plan, receive regular contributions during those years. So what does this really mean to real people in the real world? Well, two Chase Manhattan banking employees hired an actuary to calculate their future pensions after Chase Manhattan's predecessor, Chemical Bank, converted to a cash balance plan. The actuary estimated that their future pensions had been cut by 45 percent. John Healy, one of the workers, said, ``I would have had to work about 10 more years before I broke even.'' In another case, Ispat Inland, Inc., a Chicago steel company, converted to a cash balance plan on January 1. Paul Schroeder, a 44- year-old engineer who has worked for Ispat for 19 years, calculated it would take him as long as 13 years of additional work to acquire additional pension benefits. So this practice stands to hurt millions of older workers. Frankly, I consider it age discrimination. After all, a new employee, usually younger, effectively receives greater pay for the same work in the form of money put into the pension plan. In other words, you have two people working side by side. As I said, they get their wages. They also get their pensions. But if one is not getting any pensions, he is basically getting less pay. The amendment we are offering tomorrow would prevent the wearaway. It would require a company to add to the pension benefits of older workers in the same way that they add to the benefits of younger workers. I will make it clear that my amendment does not stop companies from modifying their plans. It does not stop them from converting to cash balance plans, and it doesn't stop them from improving the portability. It simply prevents employers from cutting the benefits of older workers by thousands of dollars a year, compared to what happens to a younger worker. My amendment just says that a company cannot discriminate against long-time workers by not putting money into their pension account just because they earn pension benefits under a prior plan. Workers would get whatever they are entitled to receive under the terms of their old pension plan as well as all they are entitled to under the new plan for the period that their pension fell under that plan. The total benefit would be the sum of the two. In closing, my amendment is supported by the National Council of Senior Citizens, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security, the AARP, the AFL-CIO, the Pension Rights Center, Business and Professional Women USA, the Older Women's League, and the Women's Pension Project. Older workers across America have been paying into pension plans throughout their working years anticipating the secure retirement which is their due. Now, as more Americans than ever before in history approach retirement, we are seeing a disturbing trend by employers to cut their pension benefits. I urge the Senate to support our amendment. Let me shift for just a second, in whatever time I have remaining, to say that I am going to vote against this tax bill for three reasons: It is fiscally irresponsible, it widens the gap between the rich and the poor, and it really robs our children. My friends on the Republican side make it sound so simple. They say: Look, we have this enormous surplus. It means people are paying too much in taxes. Let's give it all back in a tax cut. Well, if only it were that easy. First of all, we don't have those surpluses yet. They are anticipated, but they are not here. Again, I remember back in 1981 when we were told by some that we could cut taxes and increase military spending and we wouldn't have a deficit. Well, the deficit almost quadrupled during the 1980s. The public debt more than quadrupled. We simply put the American people on a credit card. Finally, in 1993, Congress got serious. We took the lead in stopping the hemorrhaging. So now we have turned it around. We have gone from an annual deficit of $290 billion to a surplus of about $120 billion, created 18.9 million new jobs. Unemployment is at 29-year lows. The rate of inflation is the lowest it has been since the Kennedy administration. Our GNP is growing at a great rate. We are beginning to pay down the $5.6 trillion debt saddled on our kids. My friends on the Republican side rejected that deficit reduction bill in 1993. Not one single Republican voted for it. I remember when Senator Gramm of Texas said: . . . if we adopt this bill, the American economy is going to get weaker, not stronger. The deficit, 4 years from today, will be higher than it is today and not lower. . .. When all is said and done, people will pay more taxes, the economy will create fewer jobs, Government will spend more money, and the American people will be worse off. That was in 1993. Obviously, my friend from Texas could not have been more wrong in his assessment. But now we have this big tax cut before us based on paper projections. But we also find the gap between the rich and poor is growing even wider. At a time when we need to ensure the future for our children, we are going to take it away from them. This is the way I look at it. We built up this huge debt in the 1980s. Who made out from that? Look at all the statistics. Upper-income people made a lot of money in the 1980s and secured more wealth. More assets went to fewer and fewer people in this country and, thus, the gap between the rich and poor widened. We have slain the dragon of deficits and we are now going to have some surpluses. It seems to me it is our responsibility to take that money and lift the heavy debt burden off of our kids and grandkids--$5.5 trillion of debt. We owe it to our children and grandchildren. I keep hearing a lot of my friends on the Republican side say: Well, this isn't our money; it is your money; we should give it back to you, the people today that are paying taxes; give it back. Of course, most of it goes back to the upper 5 percent of income earners in America. But I look upon it in a different way. The huge debt we ran up in the 1980s is going to be a burden on our kids and grandkids. The very wealthy people who made out in the 1980s are now going to get a big tax cut. It seems to me that what we need to do is take that money and say, no, you know who this money belongs to? It belongs to our kids and grandkids. We better be paying off our debts so they are not saddled with it when they grow up. Let's secure Social Security. We keep hearing the hue and cry all the time that young people don't think Social Security is going to be there for them. Well, this is our chance to make sure they know it is going to be there for them, and also that we secure Medicare. We then can take and reduce the debt on our kids, invest in education, so that our kids will have a growing economy and be more productive in the future. That is what we ought to be doing with this--not giving it back to people who already have too much. I must tell you, I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of people who have a lot of money. We all have rich friends, people who have made a lot of money. I have yet to have any one of them ever tell me that they desperately need a tax break. Mostly, what they tell me is: Pay down the debt, invest in education, save Social Security for our kids. That is what we ought to be doing. The top 1 percent of the taxpayers are the ones that make out the most in the tax cut by the Republicans.