Richard Lugar

Mr. LUGAR

Mr. LUGAR. I am sure the Senator is correct. There are a number of aspects of the competition title to which it would refer.

Mr. LUGAR. They cited contracting in that part of it specifically, but it covers, obviously, a much more comprehensive set of circumstances.

Mr. LUGAR. The Senator is correct. I yield to the Senator 20 minutes of the 40 minutes allocated for debate on the amendments for his control.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes of the opposition time to the distinguished Senator from Iowa and 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, may I respond briefly to the leader's comment?

Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, although I will speak in favor of the Durbin amendment, I note there are no Senators present who are prepared to speak in opposition to it. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to yield myself 30 minutes from the opposition.

Mr. LUGAR. I yield myself as much time as I may require. Mr. President, I appreciate very much the advocacy of Senator Durbin in bringing forward this amendment. I believe he has rescued a situation that has been well described by my colleague, Senator Wellstone, a valued member of the Agriculture Committee, and Senator Harkin, our chairman. We worked together to try to provide a much stronger safety net for nutrition in this country. As it turned out, in some of our deliberations--and the distinguished Presiding Officer was there for those--there were many Senators who during that period of time questioned when we were going to get to the commodity section and what money would be left at the end of the trail as we dealt with very vital issues of community development, research, loans for young farmers-- many issues that have been resolved in a very strong bipartisan fashion. As a result, the amendments I offered at that time were a bridge too far. I have been rescued by Senator Durbin and by the President of the United States in a bipartisan way because as it now turns out, it may be possible through this amendment to find resources that, in fact, restore us to a situation we might have attained during our deliberations. Let me follow through on many of the arguments the distinguished Senator from Illinois has made. Simply, the amendment generally prohibits taxpayer-provided crop insurance and farm program benefits on acreage which has not been cropped at least once in the last 5 years or 3 of the last 10 years from the time of the enactment of the farm bill. Exceptions to this general prohibition are made for acreage idle in the Conservation Reserve Program. That has been a major objective of the committee and the Senate and for long-term crop rotations as determined by the Secretary of Agriculture. The amendment does not change the structure of farm commodity programs as they have been designed in the underlying bill. The bill would still have higher marketing loan rates, a new commodity-specific countercyclical payment program for major crops, and all the other commodity provisions we previously discussed. As I mentioned earlier in the debate this afternoon, I will be offering an amendment tomorrow that will radically change the whole commodity payment system, but this amendment does not. It is benign with regard to everything that has preceded and should be debated on its own merits. In this respect, the Durbin amendment offers much less commodity title reform than I would like, and I admitted as much as a preview of what may be coming. Nevertheless, it makes an attempt to lessen the overproduction problem that will surely only worsen if we approve the underlying farm bill without change. The Congressional Budget Office has scored the Durbin amendment as saving $1.4 billion over 10 years in the commodity title of the underlying farm bill, and that is not an immodest saving. I appreciate and support my colleague's proposal to improve the Food Stamp Program with the savings, and his allocation of that, it seems to me, is highly merited. With the amendment, the Senate farm bill will now incorporate proposals I made originally and President Bush's budget proposal. It does both. The President and I are grateful to have found this partnership with Senator Durbin and with our distinguished chairman, Senator Harkin, as Senator Durbin mentioned. These new rules restore the extension of regular food stamp eligibility criteria to legal immigrants, and Senator Durbin has stressed that, as I do. A question has been raised in previous debates on food stamp eligibility, and let me be unambiguous. We are talking about legal immigrants who meet either a 5-year U.S. residency or 4-year work requirement. Those are fairly strong thresholds. Combining these with Senator Harkin's proposal to extend eligibility to all immigrant children will improve the Food Stamp Program's capacity to serve the vulnerable, but we do not offer a free ride. The criteria I have illustrated again, as Senator Durbin has, are substantial. Currently, most legal aliens are ineligible for food stamp benefits even if they meet that program's strict asset and income criteria. An estimated 500,000 legal immigrants who meet the financial rules remain categorically ineligible under current law. In addition, these rules have had the unintended effect on citizen children living in immigrant families. Because of confusion, fear, or a combination of these factors, there has been a 70-percent decline in food stamp participation among this group of children. That is an awesome change as to children who clearly were eligible. Although immigrant restrictions apply to participation in other Federal assistance programs, the Food Stamp Program has particularly strict rules. For example, in Medicaid and cash assistance, also known as TANF, legal immigrants in the United States before August 22, 1996, are eligible, at State option, under the same rules that apply to all others. In contrast, most adult legal immigrants here before that date are categorically ineligible for food stamps until they meet the 10-year work requirement. Further, children who emigrated after 1996 remain ineligible until their parents meet the work requirements or become citizens. Considering the fact many legal immigrants work in low-paying service jobs, they are among the first affected during economic downturns such as the one we are now enduring. The current immigrant work requirement thus penalizes those who have little or no control over their employment situation. The food stamp immigrant provisions that would result from the Durbin amendment do not open the door to those who come to the United States looking for a handout. Rather, they help children who are unable to support themselves, individuals who came to escape persecution in their native countries, and adults who have a documented work history or support from their U.S. sponsors. There is genuine need among this population. Studies of both local and national scope indicate serious food insecurity and hunger occur. For example, the Physicians for Human Rights reported that among 700 immigrant families, adults in one-third of them skip meals; one-fourth cut meal size due to inadequate resources; one-tenth reported not eating for an entire day at least once in the last 6 months. States are vocal about the problems created by current eligibility restrictions for immigrants. Sixteen of them provide food stamp replacement benefits with their own funds. Many others, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, have appropriated additional resources for food banks and a variety of charitable programs serving the immigrant population. The Food Stamp Program is the foundation of our country's nutrition safety net for vulnerable people. Until 1996, eligibility was based only on a family's financial need. Many, including President Bush, now voice the opinion that the food stamp immigrant policies legislated at that time were too harsh. I congratulate the President for his advocacy and the publicity that has surrounded that. It was a high-profile advocacy. I ask that each of us in the Senate endorse the Bush administration's food stamp policy by voting for Senator Durbin's amendment, which the Senator has pointed out encompasses exactly the same goals. It is our opportunity, in a bipartisan way, hopefully in a unanimous way, to improve the capacity of the Food Stamp Program to operate as a genuine nutrition safety net for our country. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LUGAR. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I think the agreement is an excellent one. I simply want to raise the question with the distinguished Senator. After Chairman Harkin has completed his opening statement, I would like to make an opening statement before we proceed to the amendments.

Mr. LUGAR. That would be adequate, yes.

Mr. LUGAR. I have a question for the distinguished manager. Then we would have four stacked votes? Members could anticipate, once we begin voting, there will be four votes?

Mr. LUGAR. Madam President, I appreciate the excellent statement by the distinguished chairman of our committee. I join him in attempting to work constructively for completion of a good piece of legislation. There is broad agreement among Members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, on the titles, aside from the commodity title. We have had amendments that have pertained to the other title and some may still be heard from Members who were not a part of our committee deliberations. Clearly, the bill before the Senate does excellent things in the area of conservation, possibly a credit for young farmers, rural development, nutrition, agricultural development, to try to get jobs in rural America for people not engaged in farming. This is why I regret that the commodity section, as it now stands, seems to me to be a considerable step backward. I am not going to engage in extravagant language about the situation. Honest Senators can differ as to the implications of this. One good reason the Senate chose not to pass legislation before Christmas was that this disagreement pertains to a lot of farmers and other Senators who are not farmers wanted to take a second and third look at this legislation. I want to talk during these informal remarks at the beginning of our session today about the prospect of some who are well informed who have looked at our work so we might improve it through the amendment process we are about to undertake. I mention, first of all, a report by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, well-known to Members of our Agriculture Committee, and, I think, to the general public as an extraordinarily reputable agricultural institution at the University of Missouri and Iowa State University. I cite specifically their report of November 2001, at the time we were last deliberating on the farm bill, on the trade issues. The distinguished chairman has mentioned the attempt by the committee to stay clear of ceilings that might lead the United States to severe difficulties with the World Trade Organization and our other trading partners. Some Senators might say that is the tough luck of anybody else who happens to stand in our way; this is the United States of America, and if we want to spend money on our farmers, by golly, we ought to do that--leaving aside whether we run into conflict that is likely to lead to lawsuits, less exports, and blockages that are already considerable with foreign trading partners. Clearly, in most of our debates on agriculture, we are in agreement that if farm income is going to go up substantially in the United States, it will have to be through exports because we have a market in the United States which is often termed mature. There is only so much food that we can consume in the United States of America. Even though we must do a better job with our food pantries, with feeding programs-- and this farm bill does address those issues and they are important for low-income Americans and for those who are unfortunate--the fact is, given the productive capability of American agriculture, we have to move the product. In order to move the product, we have tried to work with other nations under an agreement called the World Trade Organization. That gives us some certainty of legal status in other countries. If they complain and were to take action to stop our exports, we have an action to get moving, to move this through arbitration or decisions of the World Trade Organization. Most people in the agricultural business understand that. What is in dispute is whether the Harkin-Daschle bill now before the Senate bumps up against the ceilings or, in fact, goes through them. The distinguished chairman has said in his best calculation, in fact, we are well below the ceiling, in a safety margin. However, if the FAPRI is not so assertive, and I read from page 7 of the November 2000 report: Under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, the United States agreed to limit spending on domestic support programs that are considered trade distorting to $19.1 billion per year. We made that agreement. Given the structure of the proposed policy changes, we calculate a 30.3 percent chance that the United States will exceed this limit in the 2002 marketing year. This is the marketing year that will begin later this calendar year after the 2002 crops are harvested this fall. Over the projection period, price increases result in smaller marketing loan expenditures, which will tend to decrease this probability. But the counter-cyclical program begins payments in the 2004 marketing year, essentially replacing green box expenditures. . .with amber box expenditures. Those are ones that become more dangerous in the calculations. This substitute increases the probability that the U.S. exceeds its WTO limits. I mention that because clearly this can still be remedied. We are in the course of having a debate in which other Senators or other institutes may make calculations. But I am suggesting that we have a serious point of jeopardy here that may not be well understood by Senators. That is why in this opening statement I move, not to the rhetoric of my colleagues, but rather to an independent organization that is in a position to make informed comment on this. We have a further problem that is posed simply by the way this bill is structured in the payments. I cite an article by Philip Brasher of the Associated Press, dated today, in which he points out: A Democratic-backed farm bill pending in the Senate would use an estimated $45 billion by the end of 2006 This is of the $73.5 billion in new spending over a 10-year period of time that has been often mentioned--leaving but $28.5 billion for the remaining 5 years. The problem comes up that the Department of Agriculture has spoken, through the Secretary, Ann Veneman, who said, again yesterday, that the money should be distributed evenly over the 10-year period of time. Secretary Veneman says: We feel strongly that we shouldn't front-load a farm bill. Let me mention that this is a fairly large sum of money. Just a quick division of the $73.5 billion, if one agrees that much more on top of the baseline ought to be spent, would mean if we were to have fairly level payments, our work should come out at something less than $37 billion. The Daschle-Harkin bill amounts to $45 billion now. Some others have cited figures between $42 billion and $43 billion. It would appear to be $5 billion or $6 billion too rich in the first 5 years. It got that way through a number of compromises. I sympathize with the distinguished chairman of the committee who must entertain all sorts of suggestions from people who come in and have enthusiasm for doing it now, but I would point out one reason for not moving ahead in November or December, with the farm bill, is that, obviously, we have a disagreement. One may say the Secretary of Agriculture is entitled to her opinion and we may be entitled to ours. If we want to stack the $73.5 billion, $50 billion in the first 5 years, that is up to us. But on the other hand, at this point the administration has indicated the $73.5 billion is available, that the budget assumptions that have been made are the ones that have been followed through, and, indeed, the President's budget submission includes this. But she is saying maybe enough is enough. We don't want to spend any more of that money in the first half because that is going to make for a very difficult period following that, in which the suggestions of Senators will be: Let's at least do what we have been doing before. At that point we have a much richer product over the 10-year period of time than the administration or the Budget Committees have agreed to. In any event, we will address that, I am certain, in several amendments that will reduce that sum of money in the first 5 years. A more comprehensive critique of what we have been doing appeared in the Washington Post this morning. It appeared earlier in Newsweek magazine under the byline of the noted economist Robert J. Samuelson. I wish to quote directly from some of the paragraphs of economist Samuelson's analysis. He starts with the proposition: Government programs are, for all practical purposes, immortal. Perhaps so and perhaps not. But then he offers as evidence of this. Anyone who doubts this last proposition should examine the farm subsidy programs, which are the classic example of how unnecessary spending survives. Here is a parable for our larger budget predicament. Every year the government sends out checks to about 700,000 to 900,000 farmers. Since 1978, federal outlays to support farmers' incomes have exceeded $300 billion. How large is that? Well, the publicly held federal debt (the result of past budget deficits) is about $3.3 trillion. The past 23 years of farm subsidies equal almost 10 percent of the debt. But wait: Congress is about to expand the subsidies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that new farm legislation would increase costs by $65 billion over a 10- year period, on top of the $128.5 billion of existing programs. (And these figures exclude costs for agricultural research, trade and nutritional programs.) The Republican- controlled House has passed one version; the Democratic- controlled Senate is about to debate a slightly different version. And the Bush administration has supported what it calls the bill's ``generous'' funding levels. ``Extravagant'' would be more like it. Government spending should reflect some ``public interest.'' For farm subsidies, this is hard to find. Let's examine the possibilities. Do we need subsidies to ensure food production? No. The subsidies go mainly for wheat, corn, rice, cotton, soybean and airy production, representing about a third of U.S. farm output. The rest (beef, pork, chicken, vegetables, fruits) receive no direct subsidies. Has anyone noticed shortages of chicken, lettuce, carrots or bacon? The idea that, without subsidies, America wouldn't produce ample wheat for bread, milk for ice cream or corn for animal feed is absurd. Before the 1930s no federal subsides existed, yet annual wheat production rose 77 percent to 887 million bushels from 1880 to 1930. Do subsidies ``save the small family farm''? In the 1930s, or even 1950s, this argument might have been plausible. No more. Mechanization and better seed varieties have promoted farm consolidation. In 1935 there were 6.8 million farms. In 1997 there were 1.9 million and, of these, about 350,000 accounted for almost 90 percent of farm production. These farms had at least $100,000 in sales. About 42 percent of food production came from farms with $1 million or more in sales. Countless newspaper stories complain that subsidies go overwhelmingly to large, wealthy farmers. But given the distribution of food production, they must go to large farmers--unless government decides to subsidize farmers who essentially don't farm. Do subsidies stabilize farm incomes, offsetting period of low prices? Not much. There are two problems. First: When crop prices drop, the subsidies promote overproduction, which prolongs and deepens the price decline. Second: The value of the subsidies increases the prices of agricultural land by about 20 percent, according to the Agriculture Department. This raises the purchase prices for new farmers or lease payments for farmers who rent their fields. We found in the USDA report this year, 42 percent of farmers are, in fact, renters. About 45 percent of crop land is leased [according to Samuelson] as opposed to the 42 percent USDA suggested. And of course, there's this question: Why should government stabilize farmers' incomes? It doesn't stabilize incomes of plumbers, print shops or most businesses. Despite farm programs' nonexistent public benefits, Congress routinely extends the programs for political reasons. On the public-relations front, farmers are thought to be hard-working and, therefore, deserving. Somehow, it seems unfair to withdraw a government benefit they're accustomed to receiving. And if farm programs didn't exist, the congressional agriculture committees would be less powerful. So would various farm lobbies and interest groups. They all have an interest in perpetuating the subsidies. Finally, there's control of Congress. At this point, Mr. Samuelson quotes me. So this quote was my own. ``The main factor is a concern among lawmakers of both parties that power in Congress could hinge on a few races in heavily subsidized agricultural regions,'' Sen. Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, bravely wrote in The New York Times. ``If either party stands in the way of this largesse, they risk being labeled the `anti-farm party' and targeted with sentimental imagery associated with farm failures.'' Back to Samuelson: Farm subsidies are huge political bribes. Though they're perfectly legal, the ethics are questionable. The trouble is that hardly anyone raises the questions. The silence defines Washington's self-serving and hypocritical ``morality.'' Everyone in Congress is justifiably outraged these days by Enron's collapse and the losses for workers and investors. But the same legislators will vote for massive giveaways of billions of dollars to farmers without any sense of shame or outrage. There is no inkling that they might be plundering the public purse and doing wrong. (The press is guilty of similar hypocrisy. Farm subsidies excite casual, intermittent curiosity. I am hopeful that these remarks will excite both Senators and the press because I think we are on the threshold of a very large mistake in the commodity section. I have made these points before, but let me tick through them quickly. One problem with the farm bill that now lies before us is that it does increase subsidies very substantially. From the beginning of the debate, the suggestion has been that the Budget Committee set aside $73.5 billion for additional farm subsidies over the next 10 years. The dilemma here is that the subsidies will create incentives for more production. They are production based. The more bushels, the more dollars for the farmer who produces the bushels. As a result, unless El Nino, or some extraordinary weather phenomenon such as a comet crash, or something of that variety occurs, it is very predictable that production of the five basic row crops--cotton, rice, soybeans, corn, and wheat--will increase very substantially over the next 5 years. Perhaps export demand will escalate rapidly. Perhaps we will do the things we need to do and evade the blockages of the World Trade Organization and our trading partners that for the moment are outraged by this bill. Letters I have received from ambassadors from friendly trading countries--the Australian Ambassador, for example, or Commissioner Fisher of the EU, and others--point out very troubled waters ahead. But perhaps we will overcome that. I hope we will because there is no way out of the box unless we export a whole lot more to meet the production gains we are going to have. The genius of American agriculture is that the yields continue year by year. That is the potential salvation for feeding people all over the world. But between now and then, the question is, How do we get the product out of the country? Failure to do that will lead to oversupply in the country and lower prices. That will trigger higher subsidies. This is what countercyclical is all about. It never counters, it goes one way --down. If that were all of it, that would be bad enough. But the problem is that only 40 percent or fewer of American farmers are going to receive any of these subsidies. That is the nature of the row crop situation. Sixty percent--three-fifths--a majority of farmers, really have no interest in these subsidies at all. At least they are not going to receive them. That is not widely understood among farmers, quite apart from the public as a whole. The public as a whole, when they hear of that, say: How can this be? This is the way the program started in the 1930s, and it has been perpetuated. That is not the half of it. Take this 40 percent. The statistics show in State after State over two-thirds of the money--just in this 40 percent--goes to this 10 percent of the 40. The 4 percent is the total. Stated another way, we are now down to 60 percent at zero, and 10 percent of the 40, or 4 percent, are getting about two-thirds of all the money. The public say, that is preposterous; how in the world can people in a democratic legislative body skew the payments in such a distorted manner that 4 percent of the farms get two-thirds of all the results? We are doing it. We have done it, and we are about to compound it. It is no wonder that small farmers go out of business. These bills guarantee it. The same Senators on the floor today who will say, What about the small family farmer, and what about the medium-sized family farmer--I am here to tell you that farmer is not going to do well under this bill. Land prices will continue to go up. I do not predict a bubble. Nevertheless, in my own farm situation, I have witnessed management--I have owned farms since 1956--and at least two situations of crash and burn. I can recall--I think most Senators who are following this in our committee will recall--the boom of the 1970s in which those of us who had land throughout that greater time saw an increase of two or three times the value only to see 50 or 60 percent of that stripped away in the early years of the 1980s. Why is it that we are failing by going through this history again and again? We do it because our programs almost mandate it. USDA's 120-page booklet goes through chapter and verse about how it happens. It is no mystery. The problem is, for young farmers looking into this, it is a tragedy in terms of entry. For 42 percent of our farmers who rent, it is a tragedy because their rents go up. That is a big percentage. Whether Members understand who the farmers are in their States or not, the farmers understand their predicament, and the 60 percent who are getting nothing understand that zero. By now, given the Environmental Working Group site, the rest of the farmers understand who the 10 percent are who are getting two-thirds of what happens in their States. They have them listed by name. That is new. And a good number of farmers are suggesting is not fair because it is an intrusion of Government payments. It is an intrusion because in some cases farmers have been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I don't go into the extraordinary cases of movie stars, basketball players, universities, and so forth. After all, under the rules of the game, they own the land and they produce the stuff. Nevertheless, there are some anomalies here that have not been taken well. The predicament is that we have a farm bill as it stands before us, before we start amending it, that, in my judgment, almost guarantees lower prices, guarantees larger payments, and the payments we know go to very few people. They are huge. In November and December, I made the point--and I will make it even more forcefully now--that this debate occurs in almost an ``Alice in Wonderland'' situation in which somehow we can talk about farm policy as if it were totally divorced from the budget of the U.S. Government or from the needs of ordinary people. The distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad, and others on the committee have pointed out that the billions of dollars in deficit that we are now piling up are taken out of the Social Security funds. That is now clear. We are in deficit finance. We are not in surpluses. This is not free money. Social Security recipients surely understand that the $73.5 billion is coming out of the Social Security fund. It is money that could be spent perhaps for reform of Medicare, prescription drugs for the elderly, and other items that most of us in our campaign talked about and promised but clearly are not going to occur so long as our Government is running huge deficits. We are doing the deficits because we have a war on. And that is proper because terrorists hit our country on September the 11th. But that is the country in which we live. Agriculture is not divorced from that which is our country. It is not another world in which we deal with a very few farmers, maybe 4 percent of the people who are doing business. How farmers could get into such a predicament is easily predictable, given the types of policies we are about to formulate; albeit, telling the farmers: We are doing it for you and we want your support. If farmers ever figure this out, we will not have their support. They will wonder how misguided we could have been. We have been through these arguments several times. I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues in listening to them again. But we do have a second chance. Thank goodness we did not adopt this legislation in unamended form in November or December because we will be coming into conference with a House bill that, in my judgment, is equally disastrous. Madam President, with these thoughts in mind, I hope we can proceed through the amendments in an orderly way. I promise to work with the distinguished chairman to make that so. We are now getting the ideas from all of our Senators on this side of the aisle. I understand that is occurring with the chairman. Hopefully, we will have a finite list of amendments and have an idea of a roadmap for a successful conclusion. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LUGAR. I am happy to yield 30 seconds of the opposition time.

Mr. LUGAR. Madam President, I appreciate the arguments made by the distinguished Senator. It would appear to this Senator, however, that the objectives of the Harkin amendment are already met on the statute books. The reason I have suggested that the amendment creates confusion is that it might subject the current law to reinterpretation. To that extent, it seems to me that this amendment is not productive, except of potential confusion and difficulty. Very clearly, current statutes are against fraud, unjust practices, and abusive activity in contracting. I say to the Presiding Officer, the groups I cited, that at least a good number of members who are subject to the competition section, as the distinguished Senator from Iowa has pointed out, and this part of it in particular, object for good reason and cite this is going to be disruptive at least in terms of their operations and capital flow in what they are doing. For those reasons, I do not perceive the necessity for the amendment and ask Members to vote in opposition. Madam President, unless there is further need of debate by my distinguished colleague, I yield back my time on this issue.

Mr. LUGAR. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LUGAR. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes of the opposition's time. Mr. President, I will not, in fact, oppose the Wellstone amendment because it appears to me to be consistent with the legislation that is before us with some modification with regard to expansion. But I want to take this time to try to indicate the logic for my views on this in view of an amendment I will be offering tomorrow that is obviously a great deal more restrictive than the Wellstone amendment today or, in fact, payment limitation amendments that will be offered by distinguished colleagues. Essentially, tomorrow, I am going to offer an amendment that would displace the entire commodities section of the bill and substitute for that a system of payments to farmers in this country that has basic, fairly simple elements, unlike the present system in which 60 percent of farmers do not receive subsidies, which includes, in most cases, farmers who are purely in the livestock business, as well as those who are involved in vegetables and fruits and various other agricultural products that do not have row crop situations. In the current situation, 40 percent of farmers receive money, and in that group about two-thirds of the money goes to 10 percent of the farmers. As I have mentioned earlier today, using arithmetic, this reduces to 4 percent the number of farmers--principally, those in the five row crops: cotton, rice, soybeans, corn, and wheat--receiving two- thirds of the money. I want to end all of that and, as a matter of fact, now consider every farm in America that has $20,000 of revenue. I select that figure because that at least denotes, in much agricultural literature, a farm that is a serious farming effort as opposed to a hobby farm or someone who is involved in incidental planting. In America, there are about 800,000 farms that have $20,000 of income--farm entities that would meet that criteria. In some of these cases, these farms have an owner and those who are doing the farming and they share the risk. So both of those would count for a farm entity provided the amount of revenue coming into the farm meets my criteria. Essentially, under my plan, each of these 800,000-plus farm entities in the country would receive $7,000 a year for the 4 years starting with fiscal year 2003. That means 100 percent of farms--not 40 percent--would receive money. That would be the safety net, the cashflow, the money that we have often talked about as saving the small family farmer and keeping everybody alive. But it also means farmers who are now receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year would, in fact, receive $7,000. We would finally come back to market economics in terms of what we plant. We would come back to a situation which is clearly competitive in the world trade situation without danger of running into retaliation for trade practices which I believe the legislation in front of us now brings us to. We would end the bubble effect of agricultural land being priced beyond that which the young farmer has any hope of meeting. We would meet the situation of 42 percent of farmers who rent as opposed to own and do not benefit from our farm program that escalates land values artificially. In short, we turn around a bill which I believe has very unfortunate implications for the future in agriculture to one of equity. And we do so for tens of billions of dollars less than the moneys that are now talked about in this farm bill. That, I believe, is important for each one of us who wants to reduce deficits, who wants to take less money from the Social Security account, who wants to at least make possible some type of forum in which we might talk about medical reform and other issues that are important to the American people. For that reason, because I am going to present that kind of an idea, I do not plan to oppose the Wellstone amendment which in fact does have some modest limitations in the livestock area. My amendment and others that deal with payment limitation really pertain principally to the CCC payment, commodity payments. It would be inconsistent to support that kind of limitation and to find that it occurred, only to find that in another part of agriculture people were able to proceed without restraint and sometimes in ways which the Senator from Minnesota has pointed out are environmentally destructive. For these reasons, my own view is that the legislation that we now have before us in this area is in fact reform and is important. And the distinctions made by the Senator from Minnesota are there, but they are not large. Therefore, I do not plan to oppose the legislation, but I did want to explain why I took that point of view and at least the logic of my own position in view of an amendment which will be before Senators tomorrow. I yield the floor.

Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I know of no other Senator who wishes to speak in opposition. And having called for such and not finding the same, I am prepared to yield back. Let me ask, however, for just a moment to make sure, as we check our cloakroom, that there is not someone who wants to speak and who will be precluded from doing so. For that reason, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LUGAR. How much time remains on our side?

Mr. LUGAR. I thank the Chair. We are prepared to yield back that time.

Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I oppose the Harkin amendment on the basis that it is likely to confuse interpretation of the contract issue. It is a narrow issue we are discussing. The amendment offered by the distinguished chairman of the committee is a narrow issue. On balance, it appears to me to be unnecessary and redundant. It is opposed by a host of livestock and poultry organizations for those reasons. I cited a letter from many of them with regard to a number of competitive issues that are in the bill, and this one in particular. For these reasons, I suggest a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. LUGAR. My understanding, as Senator Durbin has represented it, is that Senator Gramm has offered language that has been accepted. The language is being written even as we speak. The presumption is that it will be acceptable. In the event, for some reason, it should not be, then, at that point--I suppose tomorrow morning--we would have to deal with a second-degree amendment. But, obviously, we hope we have dealt with it this evening. And I believe we have. On a second point, I understand staff will be working--even as we debate this amendment--on the overall list. There has not been agreement, as I understand it, but, nevertheless, constructive work has occurred in defining the issues that still remain.

Mr. LUGAR. I thank the Senator.

Mr. LUGAR. That is our understanding.