Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, to conduct an executive business meeting on Thursday, May 15, 2008, at l0 a.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 15, 2008, at 2 p.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``National Security Bureaucracy for Arms Control, Counterproliferation, and Nonproliferation Part I: The Role of the Department of State.''

Mr. HARKIN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, as I understand it, there will be 3 hours evenly divided.

Mr. HARKIN. I am sorry, an hour and a half--45 minutes on each side-- and then we will proceed to start voting on the farm bill. We had a great debate last night. I appreciate all the Senators who came over and spoke so forcefully and favorably for this bill. There are a few more speakers who want to speak this morning, and then we will have a little bit of a wrap-up again. Mr. President, I yield the floor for others who want to start speaking on the farm bill.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield up to 4 minutes to another great member of our Agriculture Committee, the Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Casey.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I move to waive paragraph 8 of rule XLIV with respect to all provisions of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2419, the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes--and maybe more if he needs it--to the Senator from North Dakota, who has been so instrumental in getting us to this point.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am going to yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Montana, Senator Baucus. Before I do, let me publicly thank Senator Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, who is also a very valuable member of our Agriculture Committee, for all his help on this farm bill. I can honestly say we wouldn't be here today had it not been for the effort and the work of Senator Baucus and of course his ranking member, my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, to come up with the funds we needed not by raising taxes but by closing loopholes and thereby saving some money that they were able to give us so we could meet our needs in this farm bill. Senator Baucus and I came to Congress together in 1974. We were classmates. We have been friends throughout all these years. I thank Senator Baucus for all of his diligence also in attending all of the meetings of our conferences which went on and on for hours at a time. He was always there as a valuable member giving his input into getting us to this point. The farmers and ranchers of Montana and the people who live in rural communities in Montana have no stronger voice, no better champion for them than the senior Senator from Montana. I publicly thank him for all of his help on this bill. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Montana.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana, my good friend for all these years. We first came here in 1974. I thank him for working diligently to make sure we had funding for this bill and some tax provisions we had in this bill that help correct inequities we did in the past. I thank the Senator. I will have more to say. I have other speakers we need to recognize. I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. HARKIN. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Washington State, Senator Murray.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 4 minutes to another valuable member of our committee, Senator Brown from Ohio, whose signature on this bill is the option that farmers have on the ACRE Program. I thank him for all of his efforts in making sure we had that in the bill.

Mr. HARKIN. How much time remains on this side?

Mr. HARKIN. I will let Senator Gregg go first, so I may finish debate on the bill.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, let me bring to a close this debate on the farm bill. First, let me recap. This is not called the farm bill. It is called the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act for good reason--because 67 percent of all the new money in this bill goes to nutrition to help low-income Americans, to help our kids in school get a better diet of fresh fruits and vegetables. We also lifted the childcare cap that has been there since 1993. Right now it is $175 a month. The average cost of childcare is $631 dollars a month. We have lifted the cap on childcare deductibility for those low income Americans who need food assistance. Let me read this quote from Second Harvest, Vicki Escarra, president of America's Second Harvest: On behalf of our nation's food banks, I urge Senators to vote in favor of this hunger-fighting farm bill for the millions of low-income Americans on the brink of catastrophe, facing some of the most difficult economic times they have had to endure in years. I urge Senators to support this vitally important and necessary legislation. On specialty crops, we have done more on specialty crops than any farm bill before. We put a new title in this bill, almost $3 billion going to fruits and vegetables, horticulture, all the things that, again, lend themselves to a healthier diet and a healthier America. There is also a quote from the organization supporting specialty crops that says in part: This farm bill represents a sea change in U.S. agriculture policy and a historic investment in the future of the fruit and vegetable producers across this country. We have taken a bold step to expand the fresh fruit and vegetable snack program to all 50 States, which makes certain this farm bill doesn't just help farmers but helps schoolchildren have greater access to fruits and vegetables. ``This is truly a win-win for both agriculture and the public.'' On livestock, we improved the protections for livestock producers when they make contracts. I wish to publicly thank my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, for making sure we had those provisions in this bill. The country of origin labeling now will go into effect this fall so we will know where our meat products come from and, finally, we will have the interstate shipment of State-inspected meat after all these years. On conservation, we have done more for conservation in this bill than any farm bill ever passed, almost 41 percent of all the money that is paid to agricultural producers will be paid through conservation programs to protect our soil, wildlife habitats, and clean water. Lastly, I showed this picture yesterday. I show it again. This is the countryside that we want where farmers can plant and grow crops, but they do it in an environmentally sound way, with clean water and clean streams, with buffer strips, wildlife habitat all across the country. That is what is so good about this bill because we have improved the conservation programs. This is a bipartisan bill. In fact, I got a note this morning that our former Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns, has now said he would vote for the bill. He would support it. In all my years here--this is my seventh farm bill in 30-some years-- I have never seen so many groups come together to support a farm bill, over 500 groups. Farm groups, conservation groups, hunters and fishermen, energy groups for renewable energy, antihunger groups, religious groups--I have never seen such a broad coalition of over 500 groups in support of this bill. Now we have the former Secretary of Agriculture saying he would support it. All these groups support the farm bill. The President says he wants to veto it. Evidently, he is right and everybody else is wrong. I beg to differ. This is a great bipartisan bill. We keep hearing from people: Why can't you people work together, quit bickering, get things done? We did that here. We worked together in a year and a half to produce this great product. I wish to especially thank my ranking member, Senator Chambliss, for all his great work. Senator Chambliss reminds me a little bit of old Senator Sam Ervin, who used to say ``I am just a poor, little old country lawyer from the rural South.'' Senator Chambliss may say something like that, but I can tell you he is one smart, intelligent, good negotiator. He brought this farm bill forward when he was chairman. I couldn't have asked for a better partner and working relationship in getting this bill through. I can honestly say, without any fear of contradiction, had it not been for Senator Chambliss and all his hard work, we would not have gotten the 79 votes we got for this bill in December. The fact that I think we will have an overwhelming vote today is a tribute to Senator Chambliss's leadership and hard work on behalf of all agriculture. One thing I will say about Senator Chambliss, he is a proud conservative. The only thing he is liberal about is giving out those Georgia peanuts. I want him to know, I appreciate those peanuts. Let me thank all the members of our committee. In particular, I thank the members of our conference committee. I mentioned Senator Grassley, who worked so hard on the Finance Committee portion of the bill; Senator Baucus, who as chairman of the Finance Committee got the money for us. I wish to especially thank Senator Conrad, our budget chairman, for his expertise, knowledge, diligence. Senator Conrad was there for every meeting. He hung in there on this farm bill from the beginning to the end. We could not have gotten where we are without the help, the support, the knowledge, the expertise of Senator Conrad. I wish to say, again, that the farmers and ranchers of North Dakota have no better fighter for them, no stronger advocate than they have in Senator Conrad. I can tell you nothing escapes his attention. When it comes to fighting for the farmers and ranchers of North Dakota, Kent Conrad is always in the lead. I wish to publicly thank him and his staff for all the help on this bill. Senator Leahy, the former chairman, who also fights for Vermont farmers, especially dairy producers. He had a great seat at this table. He made sure we took care of dairy farmers and nutrition. There is no stronger fighter for our dairy farmers and nutrition than Senator Leahy. Senator Lincoln, who chairs our Subcommittee on Production, Income Protection, and Price Support, a strong advocate for Arkansas rice and grain and oilseed farmers. Senator Lincoln is a strong fighter for rural residents, people who live in small towns and communities. Senator Stabenow, another conferee I am now going to refer to as the Senator of specialty crops, because it was Senator Stabenow's strong advocacy that led to the first-ever inclusion of a specific title for specialty crops in this bill and nearly doubled the support for it. Lastly, let me reach across to the other Chamber and thank Congressman Peterson from Minnesota. We have been working together on this over a year, Saturdays and Sundays, and weekdays and nights, on the phone. I also want to thank Congressman Bob Goodlatte. What a great companion he has been to fight for conservation and rural development, working hard to bring forth this bill. Again, they say the art of good legislation is cooperation and compromise. We had good cooperation between parties, between the House and the Senate, and we have a farm bill we can all be proud of. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from over 500 organizations supporting the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN. I would be pleased to yield

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator is correct. Section 8107 of the bill contains a ``savings'' provision that explicitly states that nothing in this legislation ``alters, abridges, diminishes, repeals, or affects any agreement between the Forest Service and an Indian tribe''. Section 8105 of this bill does not in any way affect valid treaty rights of tribes to gather forest products from National Forest System lands.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, we have had a very significant vote here on this farm bill. I will have to check the record, but this has to be one of the strongest votes for any farm bill in the history of farm bill legislation in the Senate. It has truly been a team effort. It took a long time--about a year and a half; 2 years, actually. Senator Chambliss, when he was chairman of the committee, started the whole process, so it has been a couple of years in the making. It has been a great team effort. As I said, we have all worked together. It has been a very long road with a lot of tough negotiations. We did it in a manner in which the people of this country want us to operate around here. We worked hard and got the bill through committee. We brought it to the floor. We had our amendments, we had good debates in December, passed it at that time, then we went to conference. We had a good number of conference meetings, frankly. But they were good conference meetings. That is the way we ought to do legislation around here. The proof of doing it in that manner--in an open, cooperative manner, having all sides being able to have their viewpoints heard and input made--is that we came up with good legislation as an end product. I want to thank and congratulate all of the members of the Agriculture Committee, on both sides, for all of their hard work in bringing this bill to this vote today. I especially want to thank Senator Chambliss for his leadership in starting this off and then serving as the ranking member for the last year and a half and working so closely with me and others to get this bill done. I especially want to thank all the Senators who were conferees. There were some long sessions that went on for hours and hours and days and days. But we hung in there. I will start with Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley from Iowa, the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, for their help in coming up with the funds we needed to put this bill together. Especially I thanked my colleague from Iowa earlier, but I want to thank him also for his diligent work and effort to make sure we had a good livestock, poultry, and competition title. I see my good friend, Kent Conrad. I said earlier, we certainly benefited from his expertise, his knowledge. It is wonderful having the budget chairman on the Agriculture Committee helps keep us on track so we know what we can and cannot do to stay within the bounds of the budget rules. So I cannot thank Senator Conrad and his staff enough for helping us comply with the budget requirements. I say to the people of North Dakota, the farmers, the ranchers, the people who live in your small towns and communities, I can honestly say I know Kent Conrad well. And there is nothing that escapes his attention when it comes to the farmers and ranchers and rural people of North Dakota. They do not have a better fighter for their interests. I might even expand that further. Farmers and ranchers and rural people all over America have no greater a fighter for their interests than Kent Conrad. I see Senator Stabenow. I said earlier I am going to start calling her the Senator of specialty crops. We would not have had a specialty crop title in this bill if it had not been for Senator Stabenow. She is unique, the only person, as far as I know, who has served on the Agriculture Committees of her State legislature, the Agriculture Committee of the House of Representatives, and the Agriculture Committee of the Senate. And that expertise shows through, believe me, in what she has accomplished in this farm bill. I see my good friend, Senator Salazar, who did so much to make sure we had a good energy title; that we start focusing much more on ethanol from cellulose. Senator Lincoln from Arkansas, a strong fighter for the rice farmers, her cotton, grain, and oilseed farmers. I might also say that Senator Lincoln is a very strong fighter for nutrition programs and rural development. I thank her for all of her help on this committee. I am going to read a list and recognize all of the staff members who work for me on the committee. They deserve to have their names in this Record because as hard as we worked, they worked three or four times as hard. A lot of times we went home at night and they were still here. A lot of times we were gone on the weekends, they were here. And, of course, first and foremost, I would thank Mark Halverson. Mark has been with me on this committee since 1988. And he has brought a wealth of experience as a farmer in Iowa, and also as a lawyer. So he brings together a lot of knowledge and expertise in guiding and directing the staff. He has done a wonderful job. I cannot thank Mark Halverson enough for his patience, his leadership, and in juggling all of the balls and keeping tabs on everything. Mark Halverson has performed above and beyond the call of duty. Susan Keith, our general counsel in commodities; Stephanie Mercier, our chief economist, trade and international food assistance and crop insurance; Phil Buchan, who worked so hard on conservation, and especially the conservation stewardship program and the EQIP Program; Eldon Boes, who came to us from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He has done so much work on the energy title. Derek Miller--Derek came to us from the House side where he worked on the 2002 farm bill. He is probably the most knowledgeable person I have ever met on nutrition and how the nutrition programs work. And due in no small part to Derek Miller, we have a great nutrition title. Richard Bender, a long-time member of my staff who handles rural development and the tax provisions; Todd Batta handled the forestry and credit titles; and John Ferrell, who did all of our livestock work and the programs for organic farmers. Adela Ramos, who does a great job keeping track of all of the ag research and food safety; Dave White from Montana who as a detailee from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, was with us for a year and a half, and worked so hard on conservation; Dan Christenson, who did so much on specialty crops and helping with nutrition; Kerri Johannsen, who worked on energy; Tina May on conservation; Amy Lowenthal, who is our counsel providing legal advice on many issues. Eric Juzenas, who came to us as a detailee from the CFTC for the reauthorization of the Commodities Exchange Act; Katharine Ferguson, who is a professional staff member who assists our staff director, Mark Halveson. We call her our ``utility player''. Whenever we need someone, Katharine is there. She can fill in for anybody and does it extremely well. Kate Cyrul, our communications director; Bob Sturm, our chief clerk who retired last year. He was here for many of the hearings on this bill and came back to fill in periodically; Jessie Williams, our chief clerk who has done such a great job of succeeding Bob Sturm; Jacob Chaney, our systems administrator; Jonathan Urban, who did so much on the CFTC reauthorization, before he left the staff to head to law school. We wish him the best in law school. Peter Kelley, our assistant clerk and legislative correspondent, who sort of runs interference for all of us; Cory Claussen, our legislative correspondent; Micah Wortham, the Government Printing Office detailee who is here to make sure our documents are printed properly; Ellen Huntoon, who covers rural development and agricultural topics. Now, again, I know that Senator Chambliss has thanked all of his staff. I do not know every single person there, but I do know Martha Scott Poindexter and Vernie Hubert. I particularly want to thank both of them for their great efforts, for their leadership, and for all the time and the efforts and the weekends, the nights. You ought to take a vacation too. Also, I want to thank the Office of Legislative Counsel, the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate floor staff, the Department of Agriculture staff. Now, I know the administration has not agreed with us on everything in this bill. But I have to say, the technical assistance provided by the Department was very helpful in putting everything together. Again, I thank and congratulate all of the staffs of the Senators on our committee--especially Senators Baucus, Grassley, Conrad. I feel very good about this bill and the overwhelming vote. I still remain hopeful the President will sign this bill. Hope springs eternal that he will sign it. If he does not, I guess we will have to face that down the road. I hope we have the votes to override. Team effort, cooperation, conciliation, bipartisanship, those are the keys to successful legislation. I am gratified to have played this role in getting this bill passed.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I certify that the information required by Senate rule XLIV, related to congressionally directed spending, has been identified in the conference report to accompany the Food Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, numbered H.R. 2419, filed on May 12, 2008, and that the required information has been available on a publicly accessible congressional Web site at least 48 hours before a vote on the pending conference report.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, here we are, finally after a long year and a half. That is how long I have been chairman. Of course, my friend and ranking member was chairman before that, actually started the farm bill when he was chairman. So I guess we can say after about 2 years we are finally here with this farm bill on the floor for final passage and ready to send to the President. It has been a long road to get to this point. But it has been a road I have had good friends to travel with, good colleagues to travel with. We have had a few bumps along the way, but through it all, we have come here on the floor of the Senate with a strong, good farm bill, and it came from the House today with a strong 318 votes. So the House has passed a conference report with 318 votes this afternoon. As I said, some people call it a farm bill. Here is the title of it: the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008. Food, Conservation, and Energy Act. We do not have ``farm'' in it. Farm is subsumed under food and conservation and energy, because all three of those apply to our farmers today. So we have a bill here, a Food, Conservation, and Energy Act, passed with bipartisan votes in the House. We have a coalition of over 500 farm, conservation, nutrition, consumer, and religious groups all together supporting this bill. This is my seventh farm bill, counting my time in the House of Representatives and my time here in the Senate. I have never seen a farm bill in all of those years with this much broad support. As I said, over 500 farm, conservation, religious groups, antihunger groups, consumer groups, all are supporting this bill. This is a food bill. Why do I say that? Because $10.4 billion of new spending in this bill, every single penny of the new money allocated to our committee by the Finance Committee on this side, the Ways and Means Committee on the House side, every single penny of that $10 billion was put into nutrition, plus another $400 million, $10.4 billion. Now, with the changes to nutrition program included in this bill, 67 percent of all of the spending in this bill goes to nutrition; 67 percent. Then I will talk on why we call it a conservation and energy bill in a few minutes. But let's talk about the food aspect of this. In the last dozen years, we have seen a steady erosion of the food safety net for our low-income families. Let me point to the standard deduction in the Food Stamp Program. This chart indicates what has happened. In 1996, the standard deduction--that is the deduction you take to see if you qualify as a family to get food stamps. In 1996 it was $134 a month. That was frozen in 1996. It has not moved since. It remains $134 to this day for the vast majority of families. But think of all of the increases low-income families now have to pay: higher energy prices, higher food prices. Everything else has gone up. So you wonder why so many people have fallen through the safety net of having an adequate supply of food? It is because we froze it in 1996. Twelve years later now, it has not moved. Now we have increased everything else around here for everybody in 12 years but not for low-income Americans. This Congress--I do not mean this Congress, but I mean all of these Congresses--we have not met our responsibility to low-income Americans. We finally do it in this farm bill. If the standard deduction in 1996 of $134 had kept pace with inflation, it would be $188 today rather than $134. Well, we could not go as high as $188, so we went to $144. So now we have increased the standard deduction of $144 a month. But the single most important thing is we have indexed it for inflation in the future. No more will we have an erosion because of inflation that hurts our lowest income families in America. So that is the important thing. We have indexed it for the future. Secondly, the asset level. Under current law a family can have no more than $2,000 in assets and still qualify for food stamps. We did not raise it in this bill, but we indexed that also for the future. So we have two indexes here for the future; one on the standard deduction and one on the asset level. For the first time ever, we exclude retirement and education savings from counting against the asset limit. Here I give accolades to my colleague from Georgia, Senator Chambliss. It was his intervention that provided that low-income seniors do not have to dip into their retirement savings to meet their food needs. If they are temporarily out of a job, for example, but they have retirement savings, they can still qualify for food assistance and they will not have to dip into that savings. Again, I compliment my colleague from Georgia for fighting hard for that. We also did something on childcare costs. Here again is something we have not kept up with, and it hurts our low-income families. Right now the childcare deduction is $175 a month. It has been there since 1993. Think about childcare costs since 1993. It has been $175 ever since then. Right now the average cost of childcare per month is $631 average. We only allow $175 for food stamp recipients to qualify. So there is a $456 a month gap and it is growing. In this bill, we remove the cap. There is no longer any cap on childcare expenses. Whatever your childcare expenses are, that is what you can deduct from your monthly income to qualify for food stamps. Again, we have also raised the minimum benefit by 50 percent, and we index that to the future. This bill also provides relief for our food banks. Our food banks in this country provide a backstop for people who may get food stamps but they run out before the end of the month. They do not have enough to get their families through, so a lot of times they go to our food banks. Well, what has happened? What has happened is that the bonus commodities to our food banks have gone down 75 percent since the 2002 farm bill; 75 percent. That is why we keep hearing from our food banks that they are running out of food. They do not have enough to meet the requirements of people who come in. They need something to get them through the weekend, get them through a holiday, because they do not have enough food and they do not have food stamps. What we did is put $1.2 billion of new money into the TEFAP, the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program, which provides staple commodities to food banks. This year we have raised it. Current law provides for $140 million annually. Here we raised it to $250 million. As soon as this bill is passed and either signed by the President, which I hope he will do, or we override the veto and it becomes law--as soon as this bill becomes law, immediately $50 million will go out to the food banks around America immediately. Then we index that for the future. So we have indexed the TEFAP commodities for the future. Lastly, we know low-income Americans have the highest incidence for diseases and illnesses, such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and diseases related to diet. A lot of that is because low-income people have a difficult choice to make in terms of their purchases of food. Some of the healthier foods, such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, those types of things, are generally higher priced. So to stretch their dollar as far as possible, low-income people go in the grocery store and they stretch their food dollars to get to the next paycheck. But the foods with the least nutrition happen to be the cheapest, and it gets them through the month. In this bill we provide a pilot program with about $20 million to put incentives in there for low-income Americans to see if we can give them incentives to purchase healthier foods as part of their diet. Lastly, I want to quote here Vicki Escarra, who is president and CEO of America's Second Harvest. I think she summed it up all well on behalf of all the antihunger groups. On behalf of our nation's food banks, I urge Senators to vote in favor of this hunger-fighting farm bill. Millions of low income Americans are on the brink of catastrophe, facing some of the most difficult economic times they have had to endure in years. I urge Senators to support this vitally important and necessary legislation. That is why we talk about this as being a food bill, because 67 percent of the new money goes for nutrition. This bill does not just provide food in this country for low-income individuals, but also for poor people abroad. There has been a lot of talk about the McGovern-Dole Program. This is a program, of course, named after former Senators Dole and McGovern that provides money and food for a school lunch program in other parts of the world, in places where they have low income, a lot of hunger. It is a good program because not only does it get a good meal to kids at least once a day, but it is a magnet to get kids in school. In countries where maybe 60, 70, 80 percent of your disposable income goes for food, one nutritious meal a day to a child saves the family a lot of money. If the place to get that food is in a school, you ought to send your kid to school. So it does two good things. In this bill, we provide $84 million in mandatory money for the McGovern-Dole School Lunch Program for kids in other countries and I expect that additional money will be provided through the appropriations process, as it has in the past. There is one other area that deals with food and health. That is the specialty crop title of the bill. We have two new titles in this farm bill, the livestock title and the specialty crop title. They have never been in the farm bill before. Under specialty crops, we have a 100-percent increase in the level of farm bill spending for specialty crops programs. This is an historic investment. The 2002 farm bill provided $1.3 billion. We provide $2.7 billion in this bill, just shy of $3 billion--a 100-percent increase in support for fruits, vegetables, organics, farmers' markets, horticulture--all in this farm bill. That is one of the reasons why the 120 groups that have interest in fruits, vegetables, and organics are supporting this legislation, because of all we have provided to support our fruit and vegetable farmers and organic farmers, who comprise the fastest growing segment of American agriculture. We have $22 million to help farmers who are trying to transition from conventional production into organic. We also provide more for farmers' markets. We provide more money for research into organics to get it up to a level where it matches the level of organics in our food supply chain. For those interested in organic agriculture, we have really invested heavily in those who want to become organic farmers, those farmers' markets where they may collect organic products, and even farmers' markets that may not be organic but may provide locally-grown produce. We have put money into this bill to provide support for what I would call aggregators--an entrepreneur who understands that perhaps Whole Foods can't go out to each individual farmer for a supply of organic foods, so you need somebody in the middle to put all this together. That is what we have done. We have provided funds and support in this bill for entities that would aggregate, go out to each individual farmer and pull the organic foods all together--it doesn't have to be organic, it could just be locally-grown--bundle them, and then they can sell those to Whole Foods or Safeway or Hy-Vee out in my area. This is an opportunity to help organic producers get into the market, also for locally-grown produce. It doesn't have to be produce. It could be meats, poultry, beef, whatever that is local, to also get them into the market supply as well. The last thing I will say in terms of health and specialty crops pertains to the fruit and vegetable snack program. This is something we started in the 2002 farm bill. I sort of have a history on this. In the 1996 farm bill, I introduced amendments to get vending machines taken out of schools. As anyone can see, I was a spectacular failure at that one. But as time went on, it became clearer that vending machines were not the only problem. The problem is what kids were eating in school. If we could provide healthier foods for kids in school, we would all be better off. Again, we know low-income kids in these schools are the first to get diabetes and be obese and have all the problems that lead to illness and disease later on. In the 2002 farm bill, I tried an experiment. I put in a provision to supply about $6 million to test a theory of mine. The theory was that if you gave free fresh fruits and vegetables to kids in school, they would eat them. If they would eat the fresh fruits and vegetables that were free, they would not be eating candy and sugary snacks, cookies, things such as that. So we tried it. The idea behind it was not to do it in the lunchroom but to do it in the classroom or in the hallway outside the classroom, not just at lunch but in the morning when kids got the growlies about 9 o'clock in the morning. The idea was to provide it as a snack when kids got hungry in the morning or in the afternoon and not just in the lunchroom. I have to tell you, a lot of people said to me: Harkin, you are nuts. You are going to have kids throwing apple cores around, orange peels, banana peels. They will be throwing grapes at each other. They are going to make a mess. I said: OK. Let's see what happens. It is all voluntary. No school has to participate. If they participate and they don't like it, they can drop out the next day. But let's see what happens. So we took 4 States, 25 schools in a State, 100 schools, and an Indian reservation just to see what would happen with that $6 million, providing free fresh fruits and vegetables. What happened to my test? Every single school says that they don't want to drop out. They want to continue. And we don't have kids throwing apple cores around and orange peels and things like that. These kids are eating better. They are better behaved. Talk to any teacher who has had experience with this program, talk to any principal, and they will tell you these kids are better behaved. They eat better. They go home and tell their parents about the great fruit and vegetable snacks they are getting, and then they tell their folks to buy them at the grocery store. Those four States have now gone to eight States. We are up to about $8 or $9 million a year now. So because this has been so successful, this conference report has $1 billion in it to expand the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program nationwide. Again, we can't do it all next year, so we ramp it up. It has to be ramped up over several years. But in 5 years, by the time we ramp this up, we will be at $150 million a year. And when we reach that level, nearly every low-income elementary school kid in America who is in a school that has a high rate of free and reduced priced lunches, every one of those kids is going to be getting free fresh fruits and vegetables as a snack during the day. Think what this will do for our kids and their health. I am really happy about this. I am happy first that the test worked. Now I am happy that we are going to take it nationwide to every State. We are targeting it to elementary schools, and we are asking States, since this goes to the States, to further target it to those schools that have a majority of low-income kids so we can get to them first. Again, this is helpful not only to the nutrition of our kids but also to the specialty crops all over America because we are going to rely upon them to grow these crops and make them available for the fruit and vegetable snack program. We said the second part was conservation. Let's talk about the conservation part of this bill. On this chart, I compare the proportion of funding going to conservation as compared to the commodity programs in each farm bill back to 1985. The red portion is the part that goes for conservation as compared to commodities. Why do I compare it to commodities? Because this is the part of these farm bills that go to farmers. The conservation share of the total of conservation and commodity payments has never been even 20 percent. But look at 2008: 41 percent of what we are putting out to farmers is in conservation. We have never done that before. We have never even come close to that before. I was proud of the 2002 farm bill. In 2002, I said we would put more into conservation in the 2002 farm bill than ever before. That was true in 2002. In 2008, we have more than doubled the share of conservation that goes out, to 41 percent. The administration said one of the reasons they wanted to veto the farm bill was because we didn't put enough into conservation. But the administration's own bill only put $4.2 billion into conservation, as scored by the congressional budget office. Our bill puts $5.2 billion into conservation, as scored by the same neutral financial accounting, using the same assumptions. So we exceeded what the administration asked for in total conservation spending. And what's more, we have done it in a way that is going to clean up our soil and water, provide incentives to farmers to be good conservationists. In the all-important EQIP, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, we put in $15.8 billion over 10 years in total funding. For the Conservation Security Program, now called the Conservation Stewardship Program, we provided $12 billion over 10 years. Why do I single those out? Because those are conservation programs that go to working lands. Most people think of conservation as taking land out of production. In the past, that has been true. We still do some of that with the Wetlands Reserve Program, and in the Conservation Reserve Program. For fragile, erodible acres and wetlands, taking the land out of production is often the best way to conserve the land, and provide vital wildlife habitat. But we know, because of the demand for food and the high prices of our commodities, more and more land is coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program. It is being tilled. It is being cropped. This is a free country and these are voluntary programs, so if a farmer has completed a Conservation Reserve Program contract, the land can go back into production if the farmer chooses. But what we can do about it is put more money into conservation on working lands, to give incentives to farmers to be good conservationists. One of the most important programs, I believe, is the Conservation Stewardship Program. This is a program I included in the 2002 farm bill. We put in place what was then called the Conservation Security Program, an uncapped entitlement program to go to farmers to be good conservationists on working lands, to give them the incentive to protect the soil, the water, and the wildlife habitat. CSP has had a little bumpy history, I will be the first to admit, because of rules and regulations that were written and cuts to funding. First of all, they limited enrollment only to specific watersheds, rather than making it available to producers across the country. That was very discriminatory. So under this bill we have revamped it. We have made it applicable to every farmer in this country, no longer just based on watersheds. Every farmer willing to meet the eligibility requirements can get into this program now. The program will be available to producers from Florida to Washington State and from New Mexico to Maine. The program pays not for what you grow, but for how you grow it--the environmental benefits your conservation activities produce. We are devoting over $12 billion over 10 years to the program. We will enroll, under this program now, about 13 million acres a year. Now, what does this mean? It means we will be giving payments to farmers to take care of the soil, to protect the water, provide wildlife habitat, and to be good producers and deliver important environmental benefits. We know we have to have the production, we have to produce the food and the fiber in the country. But you can have both production and a good, clean environment at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. This picture I have in the Chamber shows what I mean. This is what we ought to be about: This is a farm. A river runs through it--but the farmer is using good conservation practices to help keep the river clean. What you see along the river is a barrier strip of grass and trees; barriers to stop the runoff of fertilizer or pesticides that may be put on the land, to keep it from going into the stream. You do not farm right up to the riverbank. The farm is using minimum tillage. And in different fields around the farm you see different kinds of crops. You have a crop rotation that goes on. The farmer has also planted trees as wind breaks along the fence rows. That is what the Conservation Stewardship Program is all about: making sure we have good production but good stewardship of the soil, good protection for the water, and good wildlife habitat and corridors at the same time. Why do we need to devote federal spending on conservation? I have a photograph I show you in the Chamber that was taken on April 14, 1935, now known as Black Sunday, near Liberal, KS. This terrible dust storm rolled across Kansas. All of us in grade school have seen this picture in our textbooks of the dust clouds rolling over Kansas in 1935. Because what had happened? What had happened is, after World War I, because of the demand for food around the world and here, we plowed up everything in the plains States--lands that been unplowed for thousands years. We plowed it up, and when the rain didn't come, it turned to dust. People say: Well, that was 1935. Well, that was 1935, yes. Let's take a look at another picture I have in the Chamber, taken within a few miles of that picture you saw from 1935. Look at this. Now we have a color picture--the same big dust clouds rolling over the plains--taken in 2006. Let's not make the same mistake again. That is why we have put so much effort and so much into conservation on working lands--yes, to make sure farmers can make a profit, they can grow the food and the feed and the fiber we need for our people and for exports, but to do it in an environmentally sound way, which can be done so we do not have to have those dust bowls any longer. So we are going to have more land in production and more need for conservation. Lastly, on conservation, there are important needs across this country, not just in the midwest. Here is a chart of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Those of us who have been around this area for any time or who have ever been out to the Chesapeake Bay know how polluted the Chesapeake Bay is--killing the fish, taking away a livelihood for so many people who rely on the Chesapeake Bay; not only that, destroying breeding grounds for many of our fish that then go back out to the ocean. As shown on this chart, this is the watershed that drains into the Chesapeake Bay. It covers Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and Maryland--all those States. We heard from the Congressmen and Senators and people who live in those areas saying we have to do something to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. And we did. We put $438 million into this bill to help protect the uplands, to take care of it before it gets down to the Chesapeake Bay. So we have done, I think, yeoman's work in this area in helping to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. Lastly, I said food, conservation, and energy bill--energy--energy. Now, I have a chart in the Chamber on that. Let me say this: High gasoline prices and diesel prices are hurting our families all over this country. I know. I hear about it all the time from my constituents. The prices at the pump are hurting people, especially in rural areas, where people have to drive a distance to get to work. But we have studies that show because of the supply of ethanol in this country, the price at the gas pump is 29 cents to 40 cents a gallon cheaper. In other words, if it were not for ethanol, the price of gasoline at the pump would be 29 cents to 40 cents a gallon higher than it is today. So what we did in this bill is, we recognized a couple things. We need more production of clean renewable energy here in America. We need to get off the oil pipeline. But we also recognize the impact it is having on grain. So we have put a lot in this farm bill to move us to cellulose production, biomass production of ethanol in the future. This bill ramps up our capacity to produce clean renewable American energy, not only from grain, but from wood, trees, wood chips, switchgrass, miscanthus, corn stover, wheat stover, oat stover--all kinds of things we basically do not use today. We put over $1 billion in this bill to move us aggressively in that direction. So we can build biorefineries, we give support for farmers who want to grow dedicated cellulose crops for this purpose, and we give them help in growing them, transitioning them, storing them, and transporting them. This is a chart to show you we can do biomass and build biorefineries, and it helps our rural communities and helps America. There is over $1 billion in this bill to move us in this direction. Two last things in rural development. We have included policy in this bill to get broadband to rural towns and communities all over America. Second, we put $120 million in the bill that will go out right away to reduce the backlog in water and wastewater treatment facilities in our small towns and communities. I come from a small town of 162 people, where I still live, where about 25 years ago every well in my hometown--including mine--tested unfit to drink. But we got rural water, we got clean water. In my house, I now have clean rural water, and every house in my small town of Cumming has that. We know what it means, and I know what it means firsthand. So we have to get better water and wastewater for our small towns and communities, and we have done that in this bill. Lastly, there is a lot of talk about reform. Maybe the White House says we did not reform enough in agriculture. We have done what the administration asked in reforming this bill. We now have direct attribution, so we will know from now on exactly where every dollar, every dime goes, to whomever gets it. We did away with the three-entity rule, and we significantly reduced the cap on adjusted gross income. Now, I want to be clear about this. Right now if you have $2.5 million of nonfarm income, you would still qualify for farm programs-- right now. The administration wanted to reduce that to $200,000. We reduced it to $500,000, moving it from $2.5 million to $500,000, and put a cap on nonfarm income. That is real reform. Second, if the majority of your income today is from farm sources, you can have an income of $5 million, $10 million, $20 million--no limit--and you will still get farm program payments. Under our bill, we put a cap of $750,000 on farm income. If farm income is more than $750,000 then no direct payments. That is real reform. It may not be as much as some might like, but I will tell you, it is far beyond the limits we have now. I know some of our colleagues had to bite down pretty hard on this because they represent farmers who have higher input costs. They have bigger operations because they have to in order to survive. So I know they have had to take a hit on this. But this is real reform. I commend those members of our committee who worked with us on this to make sure we could have these reforms and bring it here where we are today. The last reform we put in this bill: We put in a new optional program for farmers, an average crop revenue election program. They can stay in the present price-based countercyclical program or they can take a slight cut in their loan rates, in their direct payments, and then get a revenue-based countercyclical payment if the combination of prices and yields go down. Now, again, I do not know if farmers will take it, but it is an option. I know the National Corn Growers Association was very supportive of this approach. We have it as an option. Maybe this is the future; I do not know. But it is a reform, and we put it in there for farmers to consider as an option. It has been a long road. There is a lot more I could say about this food, energy, and conservation bill. There is a lot more I know I have not covered. But it is a strong bill. As I said the other day, it is good for every American from my hometown of Cumming, IA, population 162, to New York City, population 8 million, and everybody in between. That is why so many groups, over 500 groups--antihunger groups, religious groups, conservation groups, clean energy groups--farmers strongly support this bill. Finally, before I yield the floor, let me thank my colleague, my friend, my ranking member, Senator Saxby Chambliss, for all he has done to bring this bill to the floor today. He started it when he was chairman, having hearings all over the country, laying the groundwork for this farm bill. I was privileged to take it over this Congress, as chairman. But I could not have asked for a better ranking member, someone I could work closely with. We worked together on this right to the bitter end--I should not say ``bitter end;'' right to the good end; we have a great bill--but right to the end to bring this bill forward. He has worked very hard to make sure we could get to this point on this bill. I wanted to thank him for all of his work, for his close working relationship on this bill. Tomorrow morning I will thank all of our staff who have worked so hard on this bill, in particular our staff director Mark Halverson. When this is done, I am going to make him take a vacation. He has got to catch up on about a year's worth of sleep here in a couple weeks. But Mark Halverson has been a great staff director in keeping this bill going and keeping all the things together and moving it forward. I cannot find the words to thank him enough for all he has done. On Senator Chambliss's side, I thank Martha Scott Poindexter, who, of course, was the staff director under Senator Chambliss, and now for him as the ranking member, for all the great work she has done. Both she and Mark Halverson together have worked very hard, and their staffs. They have great staffs, and I am going to name them all tomorrow. But I would be remiss if in my opening statement I didn't thank both of them for their extraordinary work and extraordinary effort they have done to get this bill to this point. So, Madam President, I have taken way too much time. I wish to yield the floor to a great friend and a great colleague and someone who has helped bring us to this point of getting a great farm bill to all the people of America, Senator Chambliss.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, under the previous order, tomorrow there will be 90 minutes for debate on the conference report prior to votes. Senators should expect at least two rollcall votes beginning as early as 11 a.m. As a reminder, under rule XXII, there is a 1 p.m. filing deadline for first-degree amendments to H.R. 980, the collective bargaining legislation. Tomorrow, Senators should also be prepared for votes in relation to appointing conferees to the budget resolution conference.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I believe there are no more speakers on the farm bill tonight, or I should say the food, conservation and energy bill. I will close by thanking all of the speakers tonight who spoke so eloquently and strongly for this bill. I thank them for their diligence and interest in and so many of them for their efforts in bringing us to this point. It truly is a bipartisan bill. A lot of times while I am traveling around Iowa and other States, people will come up to me and say: Can't you people get together and quit your bickering and get something done? I am sure the Presiding Officer has heard that, too. We have all heard that. Well, this is a time when we did that. We did get together in a bipartisan fashion on our committee and we worked hard. We got it through our committee in a day and a half. In December, we had the vote here and we had 79 votes for the farm bill. You cannot get much more bipartisan than that. So we did it. We worked together. Tomorrow, we will have another hour and a half of debate, evenly divided, on the bill. There will be at least one motion, which has already been made, on a point of order. I don't know if there will be any others tomorrow morning. Then we will proceed to final passage. I will have more to say tomorrow morning. Again, I thank all of the members of the Agriculture Committee on both sides of the aisle. I can honestly say each member of our committee had a hand in this bill in one way or the other, or on certain parts of it--some more than others in different parts. The Presiding Officer, my good friend from Colorado, Senator Salazar--if he had one fingerprint on this bill, it would be the energy title and all the great work he did to help focus us on getting more in the bill for biomass energy, that is, energy from cellulose--to begin the process of moving us toward more clean, renewable energy in this country. I thank the Senator from Colorado for all of his hard work in that area. However, the Senator also had a lot to do with the nutrition title, to make sure that was a good title to help low-income Americans. Everybody on our committee had a hand in this. I am privileged to chair a great committee. This is a committee of caring people. I know each of them. I can say that characterization applies on both sides of the aisle. These are people who care very deeply about fighting hard to represent the minority of Americans who live on our farms and our ranches and in our small towns and communities. But for, I think, the interest and involvement of the members of this Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, the legislation that is passed here would leave a lot of our rural people on the sidelines. Let's face it, we don't have the votes here on farm and rural issues like we used to in the old days. So it falls on the shoulders of those of us on our Agriculture Committee who represent agriculture and people who live in rural America, it falls on us to make sure their voices are heard and their concerns are addressed. That is why I say I am privileged to chair a committee of caring people, who care very deeply about those minority of Americans who work out there on farms and ranches every day, get up, feed the livestock, plant the crops, harvest the crops, who never know from one day to the next what the weather is going to bring or what foreign involvement may mean to markets or what effect a crop failure or abundant crop in another country has on this country and on our markets and prices. Agriculture is different. A lot of people say: Why do we have farm programs? We don't have a program for this business or that business. It is because agriculture is so unique. It is sort of the wellspring of everything else in our society--the production of our food and fiber, for the health of our country, and for our exports. I was listening to the President of the United States give his State of the Union Address earlier this year. I heard him say, there was one passage--I will never forget--he reminded us that last year our trade deficit had shrunk. I had hoped to hear him say in the next sentence, thanks to our nation's farmers because were it not for the exports of our agricultural commodities, our trade deficit would be much worse than it is. Again, I thank everyone for all of their statements. I thank all the members of our committee. We will be here tomorrow morning, and we will have a final vote. I hope we will have a strong vote. I hope we can beat our 79 votes that we had in December. The House today had 318 votes. So I hope we have an equally strong vote in the Senate tomorrow.