Collin Peterson

Mr. PETERSON

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. David Scott).

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, we had one Member that wanted to speak, and we are trying to ascertain his whereabouts at this point.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I know that Members want to get out of here and get on planes and so forth, so after Mr. McGovern closes, I will yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close as well. I want to again thank the chairman and all of the Members on both sides of the aisle for their work and hanging in there for all these months and years to get to this point, and congratulate the chairman on what I expect to be a successful outcome in a little bit of time here. With that, I would ask everybody to support this conference report, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON

Mr. PETERSON. I thank the gentlelady. I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 992, commonly known as the swap push-out bill. This bill would effectively gut important financial reforms and put taxpayers potentially on the hook for big banks' risky behavior. In 2008, I voted against the TARP because I didn't think the Federal Government should be bailing out the mess both regular banks and so- called investment banks like Goldman Sachs got themselves into with derivatives trading. Section 716 of the Dodd-Frank law ensures that, hopefully, we won't find ourselves in that situation again. The provision is a modest measure designed to prevent the Federal Government from bailing out or subsidizing bank activity that is not related to the business of banking. Originally, section 716, a Senate provision, would have forced banks to spin all of their swap activity into a separate affiliate. The House version of Dodd-Frank had no such requirement. In a compromise, the final version of section 716 allows the banks to hold on to swaps for hedging purposes and swaps related to the business of banking, primarily, interest rate swaps and foreign exchange swaps. Under Dodd-Frank, banks are required to move commodity swaps, including energy and agriculture swaps, non-cleared, non-investment grade credit default swaps, credit default swaps on asset-backed securities, and equity swaps to a separate affiliate. This represents barely 10 percent of the world of the swap market. So banks can keep 90 percent in the bank. Apparently this isn't good enough for some of these big banks, which is why we are here today with H.R. 992, trying to gut the Dodd-Frank provisions and keep playing in 99 percent of the swap market, which is pretty much the status quo. H.R. 992 also makes it easier for banks to hide commodity manipulation from regulators. In recent months, we have seen JPMorgan charged with settling cases of alleged energy market manipulation and the start of an investigation of Goldman Sachs for aluminum manipulation. The Federal Reserve is even reconsidering its decision letting banks get involved with owning commodities. Until the big banks are held accountable for the activities in the commodity swaps market, I am reluctant to repeal limits Congress already has put in place. Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, it is clear that Wall Street has not learned its lesson. The loss experienced by JPMorgan through derivatives trading in the ``London Whale'' incident is proof of that. At some point, another bank is going to find itself in similar trouble and run to the government with its hands out for assistance. Frankly, I think the American people are sick and tired of the banks asking for taxpayer help when they get in trouble from risky trading activities. In the past, I have joined our Democratic Agriculture Committee members in support of legislation to change Dodd-Frank, and I have supported those efforts because those bills reaffirmed what Congress intended with the original law, like protecting derivatives end-users. Well, these end-users also share my concerns. The Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition, representing commodity-dependent industries, businesses and end-users that rely on functional, transparent and competitive commodity derivative markets as a hedging and price discovery tool, they also oppose H.R. 992. H.R. 992 repeals a key, if modest, reform component of Dodd-Frank. My colleagues are certainly free to vote as they wish, but I urge them to be careful because people will remember this vote. I urge my colleagues, if they are smart, to oppose H.R. 992 so we don't put our taxpayer dollars at risk for bank swap activities that are not related to their banking business.

Mr. PETERSON

Mr. PETERSON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly rise to oppose this motion because we have been trying to get this farm bill resolved since May of 2010, back when I was still chairman of the committee, so we have been working on it this long and we need to get this resolved. But what is being done here today is unprecedented as far as I can tell in the history of the House, where we are giving these two sense of the Congress resolutions to the majority. From what I can tell, this has never been done before, and we are re- litigating issues that were settled on the floor of the House when we debated the farm bill. These motions take a contrary position to the position that the House took, so we are going to be voting to go against the position that we took here just a couple of months ago. So that is my problem with this. Historically, the minority gets a motion to instruct, and that has been the way it has been. In all the years that I have been here, that is the way it has been. But there's never been a situation like this. I think it is a bad precedent. It is going to be confusing to people, and we need to get to conference to get this resolved. Given the way this conference appears it is going to be put together, I am not so optimistic that it is going to work because you are bringing people from outside of the committee into this process, which is what blew this thing up in the first place in June. And it's not going to make anything easier. We are going to work together and try to get this resolved, but the way all this is coming down is making our job a lot harder, rather than a lot easier, which is the wrong direction, as far as I am concerned. So I encourage Members to oppose this rule. This is unprecedented. It is apparently being done because that is the only way they can get the votes. And we are doing a lot of things around here because of that, and that is not the way we should do things.

Mr. PETERSON

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to instruct at the desk.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This motion contains two instructions for the farm bill conferees. One is to support the permanent law provisions in the Senate farm bill and what we currently have and have had for years and years. The second is to support the Senate position of a 5-year reauthorization of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. To be clear, this motion keeps intact the longstanding alliance needed to pass a strong farm bill. America's two largest farm organizations, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union, both wrote in opposition to the House's original consideration of H.R. 2642, the ``farm only'' farm bill. Farm Bureau president Bob Stallman wrote: It is frustrating to our members that this broad coalition of support for passage of the COMPLETE farm bill appears to have been pushed aside in favor of interests that have no real stake in this farm bill, the economic vitality and jobs agriculture provides in this country, or for the customers ranchers and farmers serve. The Farm Bureau joined a broad coalition of 532 agriculture, conservation, rural development, finance, forestry, energy and crop insurance groups that expressed their opposition to splitting the nutrition title from the farm bill and urged House leaders to pass a 5- year farm bill. When such a large group of organizations, most with different if not conflicting priorities, can come together and agree on something, we should listen to them. Doing the exact opposite of what everyone with a stake in this bill recommends does not make sense, and it is not the way to achieve success, in my opinion. I will insert both the Farm Bureau and coalition letters into the Record. The farm bill's nutrition program needs to be on the same timeline as the bill's other provisions. It makes no sense to de-couple farm and food programs; they go hand in hand. I worry that separating the two of them sets us on a path to no farm bill in the future. The Senate farm bill preserves the partnership between farm and food programs, and we should defer to that approach. As Farmers Union president Roger Johnson wrote: Repealing permanent law would remove the element of the bill which would force Congress to act on a piece of legislation that provides a safety net for farmers and ranchers and the food insecure in this country, and protects our Nation's natural resources. I will insert the Farmers Union letter into the Record. The permanent law provisions are important to ensuring that Congress revisits farm programs every 5 years. These are farm laws from 1938 and 1949 that, if Congress does not pass a new farm bill, would go into effect. Actually, because we have not passed a farm bill at this point, and it expired on October 1, we actually are operating under permanent law right now. Obviously, farming has changed a lot since then, and everybody knows these programs don't make a lot of sense today, but that's the point of permanent law. It is the reason that we work together and we pass a new farm bill, because the alternative is not very acceptable. Farm bills are traditionally a compromise, and there are things that some people like and things that some people don't like. Permanent law encourages both groups to work together because no one wants to go back to the outdated and unworkable farm programs of 1938 and 1949. Without these permanent law provisions, it will make it more difficult to make changes, improvements, and reforms over time as we discover that they are needed. So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this motion to instruct, and I reserve the balance of my time. National Farmers Union, July 11, 2013. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Members of Congress: National Farmers Union (NFU) strongly urges you to vote against the rule and final passage of H.R. 2642, a bill that divorces the nutrition title from the rest of the farm bill and repeals permanent law. The two largest general farm organizations in the country have spoken out multiple times in opposition to separating nutrition programs from the farm bill. Splitting the bill is a shortsighted strategy that would effectively undermine the long-standing bipartisan coalition of rural and urban members that have traditionally supported passage of a unified bill. We are also very concerned that including a provision that would repeal permanent law did not receive any outside scrutiny or ability to weigh in through hearings. Repealing permanent law would remove the element in the bill which would force Congress to act on a piece of legislation that provides a safety net for farmers, ranchers, the food insecure and protects our nation's natural resources. Last week, NFU led a coalition of 531 other organizations in writing a letter calling for the House of Representatives not to split the bill. This broad-based coalition, composed of agriculture, conservation, rural development, finance, forestry, energy and crop insurance companies and organizations is now being undermined by extreme partisan political organizations that do not represent constituents affected by the farm bill. Thank you for your consideration of this letter. We urge you to vote against the rule and final passage of H.R. 2642 and encourage leadership to bring a unified bill to the floor as soon as possible. Sincerely, Roger Johnson, President.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), one of our subcommittee ranking members.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Fudge), one of our subcommittee ranking members.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene).

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Nolan), a new member of the committee-- well, an old member. He was a member of the Ag Committee back in the 1970s.

Mr. PETERSON. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. PETERSON. I yield the gentlelady an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. PETERSON. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I just say that we have had a way to deal with this for the last 40-some years that has worked pretty well. I think it is a big mistake, as most groups that are involved in the farm bill feel it is a mistake, to eliminate permanent law and to have a situation where one part of the bill is authorized for a different length of time than the other. People that have been involved in this for a long time think this is a mistake. I think it is a mistake. I ask my colleagues to support this motion to instruct, and I yield back the balance my time.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. PETERSON

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise to oppose this resolution and to say that we have very strong bipartisan opposition to this resolution. Frankly, I don't know why we are doing this, because we settled this issue when we had the debate on the floor earlier in June. This is a sense of the Congress, and there is no requirement that the conference committee pay any attention to this, so I don't quite understand why we are going through this process; but in any event, we are here. We have a sugar policy that supports $20 billion in economic activity and 142,000 jobs. The reason we have it is that every country in the world that produces sugar subsidizes those industries or supports them, in most cases substantially more than does the United States. So if we change this program or give up what we have put together here, what you are going to do is give this industry away to countries that subsidize and support their industries more than we are doing here in the United States. I don't know why we would want to do that, but that would be the effect of this. The Government of Mexico owns 20 percent of the industry in its country; and with NAFTA, we gave Mexico open access to our market. This is in spite of the fact that they own the industry down there. President Reagan once said that unilateral disarmament has never worked, that it only encourages aggressors. Reagan had it right. So whether it is defense policy or economic policy, you don't give something away for nothing to people who are doing more than what our opponents claim we are doing. The United States is the largest sugar importer in the world. We bring in 1.5 million tons of sugar from 40 countries. Nobody else does that. This is sugar we could make here in the United States, but we gave away 15 percent of our market to help other countries. We have been doing that for a long time, and we have had pretty good prices. All of a sudden, because Mexico had a good crop, I guess, the prices have collapsed. If you think that the loan rate--the bottom price that we have in the sugar program--is giving us some kind of a profit or some kind of a ``fat cat'' deal, I invite you to come up to American Crystal's annual meeting in December in my area and in Representative Cramer's area, at which they are going to be reporting that they have lost money this year because the sugar prices are at loan rates. So the loan rates that are in the bill are not guaranteeing anybody a profit. They are just putting a floor under it, trying to keep us in business until next year. There is no good reason to be doing this. We settled this issue before. The reason for the April 1 date is that, in the past, the USDA has made mistakes in terms of where we were with the market. So by having an April 1 date, we can make it less likely that these mistakes are going to happen in the future. That is the main reason that we have got it in there. The sugar program has operated at no cost for a long time. During that time, the opponents claim that the prices were too high. Now the prices have collapsed, and they are saying the safety net costs too much. So they are still complaining about the prices being too high. I will guarantee you that you could get the price down to almost nothing, and it wouldn't change the price that people charge for candy bars. You could probably give it away, and they wouldn't lower the price. This has been a good policy. It keeps sugar stable. There was a time in this country when we got rid of the sugar program. What happened? We had prices go up to 50 cents a pound, and we had the candy companies and the sugar users come in and ask for the government program to be put back in place so they could get the prices down to a more affordable level. I will guarantee you, if you get rid of the sugar policy, what you are going to have is a feast or famine situation. You might have low prices for a while, but you are going to have a time when high prices are going to do a lot more harm to you than this sugar program does. This is a bad idea. It doesn't need to be done, as we have already settled this issue. I ask my colleagues to reject this for any number of reasons. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), the chairman of the relevant subcommittee in the House Agriculture Committee.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that for the 12 years before July there has been no cost at all, and the food stamp part of the farm bill had no hearings either. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum).

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to my friend from Texas, Judge Poe.

Mr. PETERSON. Madam Speaker, I would like to correct the Record. We do not need to import. The farmers in my district could easily produce that 15 percent. We gave those markets to these countries out of the goodness of our heart. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Mr. PETERSON. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart).