Frank Lucas

Mr. LUCAS

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 380, I move to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 2642) to provide for the reform and continuation of agricultural and other programs of the Department of Agriculture through fiscal year 2018, and for other purposes, with the House amendment to the Senate amendment thereto, insist on the House amendment, and agree to the conference requested by the Senate.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question. The previous question was ordered.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would note to my colleagues that many of the points of great merit offered over the course of the discussion of this motion were points debated and discussed on the floor and in committee. I respect the sincerity of all of my colleagues, but we need to remember this motion has two key central points: Number one, the 1938 and 1949 law remain permanent. We take away the conference's ability to negotiate that point with the United States Senate. Take it away, take it off the table is the goal of this motion to instruct. The second point, of course, deals with the authorization on SNAP. Should it be 3 years? Should it be 5 years? That is the question you have to decide in this motion. Do you take away the House's ability to have the option of making whatever we can all agree on permanent law? Do you insist that we continue to have the food program, SNAP, run concurrently with the rest of the farm bill? It's a very simple set of issues to consider. From my own perspective, I would ask the House to allow the conference committee as much flexibility as possible in negotiating with the other body--as much flexibility as possible--and that would require rejecting the motion to instruct. With that, Mr. Speaker, again, I want to thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I look forward to the joys of hopefully not quite as challenging a conference as this first 2 years of this process has been but, nonetheless, an acknowledgment that we need to get our work done in a timely fashion and bring a product back that a majority of this body can accept and support. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LUCAS

Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume. First, I would note, again, to my colleagues that this is one of the final stages of this long, challenging process of putting a comprehensive farm bill together. With the conclusion of this debate on this sense of the Congress resolution and the votes that I suspect will come sometime later today or tomorrow, we will begin then with the appointment of conferees, the formal process of working out the differences between House and Senate bills. That is no small accomplishment, considering how many years Ranking Member Peterson and I and the members of the House Agriculture Committee have put into this effort. As a matter of fact, when we started the process of gathering information and putting the hearing record together, I was the ranking member, and Mr. Peterson was the chairman. So this has been a long, long process. Now, I must say that I am obligated to rise in opposition to the resolution. I think the world of the author of this amendment, and in his role as chairman of the House Budget Committee, not only is he well-intentioned in this amendment and his many other efforts, but let's be honest, our friend has a tremendous amount of work on his plate, addressing everything from the issues about how we work our way out of this debt ceiling matter, how we address funding the Federal Government, how we finally put a budget resolution together. I know he is a busy, busy man; but I must say the committee focused very hard for literally years on all of these issues. I won't pretend that with all of the things going on right now, not that many weeks after some very intense debate on the floor of this House, the goodly number of our Members are not focused on particular nuances of the farm bill, but on everything else going on. But I would remind my good friends, the perspective of the House Ag Committee and the perspective of the majority--yes, maybe I have had too much fun with farm bills in recent years--of this process has led us to believe that it was important that we encourage participation in crop insurance. Crop insurance is like other insurance. It is about creating a pool of risk and spreading it out as far as you possibly can, having as many participants as you possibly can to share adversity, to contribute more premiums into that pool so that when you have that inevitable loss somewhere, you are better able to address it. And that is the perspective the committee took and I believe the House, as a whole, took. Get as many people involved in utilizing and expanding the insurance pool as is possible. Now, this sense of the Congress language is, in many ways, similar to the Senate language and would restrict the number of people based on AGI that would be able to participate, taking people out of the pool, shrinking the pool. These are, in all fairness, some of the most efficient farmers. I will just simply ask my colleagues, remember the work of the committee and the work of this body. Help us keep this program as viable as possible. Help us make sure that all farmers have the tools to mitigate their risk. Now, there is one other perspective here, and we have talked about this many times, and it is the perspective of, what is the farm bill about? Is it about raising food and fiber? Is it about meeting the nutritional needs of our citizens in this country and having our surplus available to consumers around the rest of the world? Or is it about deciding who a farmer should be, and using policy decisions within the farm bill to pick people who we want to farm, and to deny resources to people we don't happen to like who want to farm also? I reject that also. Farm bills are about farming, raising food and fiber, meeting the needs. I would ask again, very respectfully, of my colleagues, honor the decisions of the full House not all that long ago. Reject this sense of the House resolution. Remember that you are helping us build on something that is kind of amazing in this session of Congress, a bill that came out of committee with $40 billion in mandatory spending reform, with a bipartisan vote, a bill that left the United States House with a total of $60 billion in mandatory spending reforms. I can think of no other committee in this session of Congress that can lay claim to that--$60 billion in mandatory reform. Let us go to conference. Let us have as much flexibility as possible. Let us finish our work. Let us finish our good work, and we will bring a product back to you from conference that you can judge on its merits. With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer).

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the good gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Stutzman).

Mr. LUCAS

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Stutzman).

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, might I inquire as to how much time is remaining for both myself and the ranking member?

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bentivolio).

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the ranking member that I potentially have some additional speakers, but they've not made an appearance yet. Therefore, I reserve the balance of my time to close if they do not appear.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order against the motion to recommit.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Ellmers).

Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), the primary subcommittee chairman on this important issue.

Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I have the honor and privilege to yield 1 minute to the majority floor leader of the United States House of Representatives, Mr. Cantor.

Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Southerland), who's worked very diligently on this bill.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time. My dear colleagues, on several occasions we have alluded to the process that we have gone through now, literally, for years to try to craft a comprehensive farm bill. I think most of you know that I would have preferred this have been accomplished a year ago. I was proud of the committee work done at the time, done in a bipartisan way. I was proud, even though we had to start over in a new session of Congress, of the bipartisan effort done in the committee this time. Not every Republican or every Democrat on the committee voted for it; but we had a majority of both sides, something that seems to be kind of difficult these days on a lot of issues. But that bill came to the floor. And even after a number of amendments were adopted by a majority of this body primarily focused on the nutrition title, a majority of the body chose not to pursue that bill, not to allow it to move on. And we were compelled to bring what I affectionately referred to as a farm bill only to the floor, one without the critical title dealing with nutrition, and we were successful in passing that. But as was noted by many of my colleagues on this side of the room, that left a critical piece out, the nutrition title. And that's the product that we are addressing today. It incorporates all of the efforts--I will repeat again--from the committee work dealing with categorical eligibility and LIHEAP and advertising and all of those things. The language we deal with today incorporates the amendments adopted by this body in an effort to address the committee bill, empowering States through a pilot program to engage able-bodied individuals in TANF-type work, ending SNAP eligibility for convicted murderers and pedophiles and rapists--not their children, not their spouses, but they, themselves. Language allowing the States to very clearly use drug testing as a part of their SNAP application process was adopted by a majority of the votes on this floor, those items. And now it includes language that came out of the leader's working group, things that deal with what we refer to as ``able-bodied adults without dependents,'' ABAWDs. That first committee draft, reform to the tune of about $20 billion. Many of the things on the floor would have added to that, perhaps not substantially. And in the working group's language, an additional $20 billion in reform. That presents us with the bill that we're looking at today, with virtually everybody's ideas and reform rolled into one, a substantial amount of savings in a single bill to reform. I would say this to all of my colleagues: you're going to vote your conscience today. You understand the bill, each and every one of you. You understand, I think from your perspective, the policy implications. I happen to believe that the items in this bill are of sufficient merit to be discussed in a conference committee; potentially, if the conference would agree, to incorporate them in a final conference committee report. But that discussion cannot take place if this bill is not passed. Remember, if this bill is not passed and we go to conference, there are no instructions for reform from the House in effect. And what was one of the fundamental points that I and my colleagues in the Ag Committee discussed as we started this process a long time ago? There would be reforms in all parts of the next farm bill--commodity title, conservation title, nutrition title. There would be the implementation of changes based on our experiences and our learning from the last farm bill and series of farm bills. I know you're going to vote your conscience; but I ask you, let me go to conference with the Senate with the maximum number of options to work through because, ultimately, whatever comes out of that conference has to be a comprehensive farm bill. It has to address our ability to raise the food and fiber safety net. It has to address the safety net that affects all of our consumers. I will simply close by saying this: as I said at the beginning of this debate, it should not be this hard to pass a bill to make sure that the consumers in this country and around the world have enough to eat. It shouldn't be this hard, but everything seems to be hard these days. So let's do the hard things. Let's get our work done. Let's go to conference. Let's put a final bill together. Let's fulfill our responsibilities. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LUCAS. I withdraw my point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from the great State of Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp), my next-door neighbor from across the State line.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LUCAS. Reclaiming my time, I am aware of the leadership of Colorado in this area. I look forward to working with the gentleman from Colorado as we move forward with this legislation to ensure that Federal dollars are available to States that actively move people to self-sufficiency.

Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Crawford), one of my subcommittee chairmen.