Collin Peterson

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time. Mr. Speaker, I want to echo Mr. Goodlatte's comments. I have a list of all of the staff members, majority and minority, that I would like entered into the Record to honor their work. You think we've been through a process here. It's nothing compared to what the staff has done, and so they deserve our thanks. And they're going to, hopefully, get a little bit of rest now once we get this over with. To follow on Mr. Goodlatte's comments, there's a lot of reform in this bill that I would call real reform, as opposed to ginned-up reform that's been done by different folks. We have made huge changes in the conservation programs that are going to make those programs work a lot better in the future, work for more different parts of the country. We have a new revenue-based countercyclical program that we're going to try out on an optional basis for the next 5 years that may be the new future direction of the farm bill, depending on how it works out. So we've got a lot of reforms in this bill that never get talked about because all anybody wants to focus on is AGI. Well, I don't have any problem putting an AGI limit on nonfarmers, because, frankly, I don't think they should be in farming in the first place. We've got enough capital in agriculture. We don't need folks from outside of agriculture coming in and being involved. That's my personal opinion. But, you know, we've got a $500,000 limit. We'd have gone lower, but that's as far as we could get. We put a limit on farmers, on farm income for the first time, in spite of the fact that this is the only part of business people in this country that are getting benefits from the Federal Government that are requiring an AGI, that I know of. I don't know why farmers get singled out and nobody else does, why we don't have an AGI on oil companies and whoever else is getting benefits from the Federal Government. That continues to mystify me. But I just have to clarify, you know, people keep manipulating these statistics. We've fixed some of that in this bill as well, which I would call reform. But as to what Mr. Goodlatte said earlier, we have a $500,000 hard cap on nonfarm income. So I suppose that if you earn $500,000 as a doctor or something, your wife earned $500,000 as a doctor, and then you had a farm and you earned $750,000 as a farmer, and your wife had a real farm and earned $750,000 you could get to $2.5 million. But I think you need to understand that, in order for you to qualify for that, you're going to have a real genuine farm, and it has to be your income, certified by a CPA or a lawyer, and if it's not, if they do it wrong they're going to go to jail and you are, too. So I think the likelihood of anybody getting to this $2.5 million limit is almost nonexistent. That is a bogus argument that's being put out there, being ginned up by people that want to keep this fight going on. So if you want to put a $200,000 cap on everybody that gets money from the Federal Government on AGI, then we'll be right there with you. But I don't think that's going to happen. Just like we tried to put AGI limits on conservation. We had a revolt. Some of these conservation groups that have been pushing these payment limits, as soon as we said we're going to have the same limit on them as farmers, we had a revolt. This is a good bill. It's got a lot of reform. I thank everybody. We'll appreciate a good vote to get this over with. Majority Staff: Andy Baker, Christy Birdsong, Wynn Bott, Aleta Botts, Claiborn Crain, Jack Danielson, Nona Darrell, Adam Durand, Nathan Fretz, Alejandra Gonzalez-Arias, Chandler Goule, Tony Jackson, Craig Jagger, Tyler Jameson, Keith Jones, Martha Josephson, John Konya, Scott Kuschmider, Rob Larew, Merrick Munday, Clark Ogilvie, John Riley, Sharon Rusnak, Lisa Shelton, Anne Simmons, April Slayton, Cherie Slayton, Debbie Smith, Kristin Sosanie, and Jamie Weyer. Minority Staff: Patricia Barr, Brent Blevins, Bryan Dierlam, Mike Dunlap, John Goldberg, Alise Kowalski, Kevin Kramp, Scott Martin, Josh Maxwell, Pam Miller, Rita Neznek, Bill O'Conner, Pelham Straughn, and Pete Thomson. Fellow/Intern: Rob McAfee, Rachel Huhn, Randi Hughes, Jennifer Spraberry, Olivia Vickers, Melinda Cep, and J.D. Hale.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to recognize for 1 minute the distinguished Speaker of the House without whose support and backing we wouldn't be here today. From the start when she came to Farm Fest a couple years ago until now, she has become an agriculture expert. We appreciate her involvement.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), another outstanding member of our committee, for 1 minute.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from South Dakota (Ms. Herseth Sandlin), a valuable member of our committee.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to recognize one of the members of the conference committee, a valuable member of our committee, Mr. Scott of Georgia, for 1 minute.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to recognize the distinguished chairman of the Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry Subcommittee, one of our outstanding chairmen, Mr. Baca of California.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to recognize the chairman of the General Farm Commodities and Risk Management subcommittee, the outstanding chairman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) for 1 minute. (Mr. ETHERIDGE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 10 seconds.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to my vice chairman and the distinguished chairman of the Conservation, Credit, Energy, and Research Subcommittee, Mr. Holden from Pennsylvania.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the chairman of the Specialty Crops, Rural Development and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McIntyre) for 1 minute. (Mr. McINTYRE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I thank the Congressman from New York for his remarks and his work on this issue. These are, indeed, some serious concerns about the implementation of the New York CREP and its impact on the gentleman's muck farmers. It is my understanding that USDA and the State of New York have taken steps to ensure that any new enrollments will not have such negative impacts. The conference report under consideration directs the Secretary to work with the producers in New York's muck soil areas to use existing programs to help implement farm bill conservation programs on acres still under production. I look forward to continuing to work with the Congressman from New York on this issue in the future. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from New York, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, without whose tremendous work we wouldn't be here today. So, Mr. Rangel, we very much appreciate, on the Agriculture Committee, your effort, and you, Mr. Pomeroy, as well, to help us get this bill to the final end. (Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I would be happy to engage in a colloquy with my friend from New York.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am going to recognize my good friend, Mr. Rangel, but before I do I would like to recognize Mr. Hall for a colloquy.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I yield myself an additional 1 minute. It has a bioenergy reserve program to allow us to learn how to grow switch grass and how to harvest it and store it and move it; woody biomass so we can get cellulosic ethanol going. We have for the first time significant money in for fruits and vegetables, which are 50 percent of the agriculture in the United States. We have country-of-origin labeling. It's going to be mandatory on fruits and vegetables and meats starting September 30. We have interstate meat shipment, another issue that's been hanging on for 20 years. We've solved a lot of problems in this bill. We have a bill I think that covers all the interests in the country, and we have a bill that we should all be proud to vote for in this House. Again, I want to thank all my colleagues for their hard work and look forward to having a strong vote on this and encourage you all to support this bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to recognize the distinguished chairman of the Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Subcommittee, who is responsible for having the first-ever livestock title in the farm bill, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Boswell) for 1 minute. (Mr. BOSWELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Speaker, it's been a long road to get to this point, and I want to start off by thanking Mr. Goodlatte, the ranking member of the committee, again for his great work; my subcommittee chairmen, who started this process off; the ranking members on the Republican side; my friends on the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel especially, Mr. Pomeroy, for their hard work to get to this point; the Speaker for backing us up and helping us keep on track here to get to a final consideration; and for all of my colleagues in the House for being patient and working with us and giving us your input. We have come to a point where I believe we have a good bill that should be supported by all Members of this Congress from both urban, suburban and rural areas. I have here a chart that shows how the current farm bill spending is going to be allocated on a 10-year basis, which is what we have to go by. Nutrition in this new Food, Conservation, and Energy Act is 74 percent of the spending over the next 10 years in this food bill, commodities are 16 percent. Back in 2002, these numbers were 65 and 35 or something. Conservation is 7 percent; and energy and the specialty crops, the other items, are 3 percent. This shows on another chart how we got to those numbers. We had a $58 billion reduction in our baseline. What happened, before we started because the prices were up and the amount of money going out to farmers was down, so we started off $58 billion in the hole. We were provided $10 billion from our friends in the Ways and Means Committee of additional spending over the baseline, and this is how that spending was allocated out. Nutrition was more than the $10 billion of new money that was put in the bill, $10.3 billion; conservation, an additional $4 billion; specialty crops, $2.3 billion; and in the commodity title, we actually had a reduction. In addition to the $58 billion that we reduced, we had another $3.6 billion that we took out of the commodity title to help put money into these other areas. Having done that, we still have an adequate safety net for farmers. It's very much like the current law that we have been operating under. We have made some minor changes, and we have brought the AGI limits down from $2.5 million to $500,000 on non-farm income, $750,000 on farm income. So we've made some reform, not as much as some people would like, but more than others would like. We got both sides a little bit upset so I think we're doing something pretty close to what we should. And to show you how the allocation is based on what the 2002 bill was and what the current bill is, this shows in yellow the 2002 bill and in the kind of purple color the current bill. In nutrition, you can see there's a substantial increase. Conservation, the commodity title is down, and energy is up a little bit. So we have I think a balanced bill that maintains a safety net. It includes a new disaster program that is paid for. This bill is paid for. The $10 billion comes out of a custom user fee extension which is not a tax increase, which has allowed us to have a bipartisan bill. We've put a bill together here that I think addresses what people are concerned about in this country. It has a loan guarantee program for cellulosic ethanol.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 minutes of my time to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control that time.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on Agriculture and Foreign Affairs be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 6051) to amend Public Law 110- 196 to provide for a temporary extension of programs authorized by the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 beyond May 16, 2008, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule and the underlying bill. This has been a long, drawn-out process. It has been a long time since last July when we first passed this bill out of the House. I want to first of all commend my ranking member and good friend and colleague, Mr. Goodlatte, for the tremendous work that he did on behalf of this bill and his caucus. As was said earlier, this bill is a much better bill because of the involvement of Mr. Goodlatte and the great work that he did. I very much thank him for sticking with us here to the end. We obviously would have preferred to have been here earlier, but this was a difficult bill to work out because of all the competing interests, and the fact that we started off with $58 billion less in baseline than we had back in the 2002 bill. In order to make all the accommodations for the different folks that were interested in improvements in this bill, we had to find additional resources outside of the Agriculture Committee, which caused additional problems. We had to deal with a much different bill in the Senate, where you had a lot of powerful committee chairmen that brought issues into the bill that were not in the House bill. We have worked through all of that, and we have produced a product here that I think it isn't perfect, but satisfies, in most cases, the different interests in this bill. We maintain a safety net for farmers along the lines of what we have had in the past. I, personally, would like the safety net to be stronger than it is, but it's what can be accomplished at this point. We have $10 billion of new spending above the baseline in this bill, and that $10 billion is-- I guess money is fungible, but the increase in this bill for nutrition is $10.3 billion. You could say that we have improved the nutrition funding to the amount of new money that's put in the bill. This is money going into the food shelves, food banks that right now are empty and very much needed. There is a new fresh food and vegetable snack program for kids in low-income schools, and there is improvement in food stamps. We have a good bill that has a lot of other components. I urge my colleagues to support the rule and support the underlying bill.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman, and I wasn't going to prolong this, but just like I had to take issue with saying earmarks were there that aren't there, I take very much issue with your saying we are waiving PAYGO. We are not waiving PAYGO. We are not waiving PAYGO in this bill. We are meeting PAYGO requirements based on the 2007 baseline which is what we started the bill under. This is what the rules are in the Senate. Let me explain my point first, and then I will be happy to yield. So the Senate has a rule that says under whatever baseline you start off with, that you continue under that baseline with the bill until a new budget resolution is passed by both the House and the Senate. For whatever reason, the House has a different rule when we adopted that, and it says once you file the Budget Committee report in the House, not when it is passed, if a new baseline comes along, you are supposed to use that. But clearly, we cannot write a bill of this magnitude and this scope having two different baselines. We can't have one baseline in the Senate and another baseline in the House. That is number one. Number two, the common practice around this place has always been to follow this rule, that we always use the baseline that we started off with. That is what we have done for years. So all we are doing is complying with what the Senate rule is because we have to do that and it makes sense. We are not trying to waive anything. We are not trying to get around anything. This bill, it meets PAYGO requirements and it meets it under the 2007 baseline which is what we started the bill under. And we are not waiving PAYGO.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. The House bill didn't have a paid-for disaster provision in it, the Senate bill did. And so when we molded these together, we put these disaster provisions in, and we paid for them, the first time that we actually paid for a disaster with pay-as- you-go money, and we included the California disaster in the process and paid for it. This is not a new program. As I said, it is not an earmark, and it was brought in because we were dealing with a disaster. This is clearly a disaster. Any place that you have a complete shutdown of a commercial fishery, they are going to be in asking for help from the Federal Government. That is appropriate. This was brought in, the permanent disaster program from the Senate, and funded when we molded them together.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I haven't seen the entire list that's being talked about here, but a couple of the things that have been mentioned are not earmarks, and I don't know why the gentleman continues to characterize them as such. First of all, this is not an earmark, it does not define Plum Creek. What it says is that these bonds can be used for any habitat conservation plans that protect native fish or any forest land covered by these habitat conservation plans. We know of at least seven habitat conservation plans that would qualify under this provision. So, therefore, it's not an earmark. The Cedar River Watershed Habitat Conservation Plan in King County, Washington, the Plum Creek Timber plan, which is also in Washington, the Washington Department of Natural Resources Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan in Washington, the West Fork Timber plan in Washington, the Plum Creek Native Fish Habitat Conservation Plan in Montana and Idaho, Green Diamond and Pacific Lumber, both in California. So this is not an earmark, because any of these would qualify. There are probably more that we don't know about. Now, this was in the Senate bill, so I don't know what you are talking about airdropped. A couple of the others that I heard you mention were also in the Senate bill, and there is another one that you characterize as an earmark, which is not an earmark, and that's the salmon recovery disaster plan which was a plan that was actually first passed in the 2006 Congress by the Republican majority, was implemented in 2006. Fifty million dollars at that time was put out to the people that were in the commercial fishing industry, primarily off the coast of California. At that time there was a partial shutdown of the salmon season. Now, this year, we have a complete shutdown of the salmon season all along the coast from California to Oregon to Washington State. So it's much broader, and it not only shut down the commercial fishing, it shut down the recreational fishing in those areas. What we are doing is replenishing this disaster fund with money that is exactly similar to what was done, what was in the statute and it was actually disbursed in 2006, because the disaster is much bigger this year than it was in 2006 because we had a partial shutdown. Now we have an entire shutdown of three States. So this is clearly not an earmark, this is in the disaster title of the farm bill that goes along with the other disaster provisions that are in the farm bill. You know, I don't know, I guess because apparently some people think that being against earmarks is popular and, whatever, they try to make this into an issue. But a number of the provisions that were raised by the gentleman are clearly not earmarks. The House bill that passed out of here had no earmarks. We had to deal with the other body, and we took some provisions from the other body, because that's how a conference works. You know, there is a lot worse stuff that was in that bill that we took out. I just want to clear the record that a number of things being talked about here are not earmarks, and I would encourage my colleagues not to support this point of order.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I will just say very briefly that, as I said earlier, we get kind of off on tangents here on talking about small farmers and so forth. But the effect of a lot of these different proposals on reform, the effect of them are going to be to raise food prices for people in this country and around the world, and if that's what you want to do, you know, you can talk to your voters about that. But 23 percent of the farms in this country have more than $50,000 of sales. But they do 90 percent of the business. They produce 90 percent of the food and they get 81 percent of the payments. So we already have changed things. But the point is $50,000, I think my good friend from Arkansas will agree, in our part of the world is not a real farm. You can't make a living on $50,000 of gross income on a farm. It's just not realistic. So when you get up to a realistic commercial size farm, they produce just about all the food in this country. Now there's some small farms that are developing that are doing pretty well, and I've been supporting that and we're supporting that for the first time in this farm bill; and that is people producing organic, people producing local foods, getting out of the commercial system. So there is a place for small farmers in these niche markets, and they're growing, and that's a good thing. But you go to those niche markets and you're finding you're paying a lot more money for that type of food. And a lot of people want that and that's great. If we get involved in this and screw up this system, the gentleman from Arkansas is correct, we're going to endanger the national security of this country. If we ever get in a position in this country with this food that we're at with oil, we've got significant problems. And this isn't a perfect system. When it was established, I voted against it. If I had my way, as I said earlier, I would not do it this way. But this is the consensus of people in the business of agriculture, the system that we have, that works so they can get financing and they can stay in business. And you hear about the WTO. One of the biggest objections to what I want to do, the direction I'd like to go with farm policy, is that we can't do that because the WTO would object. And we've got the World Bank out there getting these developing countries to adopt these free market ideas like some people have done in this country, and the effect of that has been to not help the people. It's made them more food insecure. So we're never going to settle this debate. As my friend from Arkansas said, we've argued about this for how long. We are going to produce a farm bill here pretty quick. It's going to have a lot of reform in it. It's going to have a lot of new initiatives that we haven't done before in organic, in energy. There's a lot of money in there for conservation. We're going to have $10 billion of new spending above the baseline. After we took a $58 billion hit in the commodity title, we added $10 billion not in the commodity title. We added it into nutrition. So we're adding $10 billion of spending, and 10.261 of that, more than we've added to the bill, is going to nutrition to help people to cope with these high food prices. So we're doing, we think, the right things, putting in the right kind of initiatives in this farm bill. It's not going to satisfy everybody, but it's moving in what we think is the right direction for the country. I would encourage my colleagues to oppose this motion to instruct and continue to support the work of the Agriculture Committee. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.