Mark Sanford

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and I just want to follow up again on what I have actually seen in the field, because our family actually grows pine trees. And when I talk to people like Joe Young, they used to go out there with a chain saw and cut the wood. Now they have a thing called a feller-buncher, basically a cutter set up on top of a four wheel drive tractor that moves around through the woods. But these guys out in the woods, without government research grants, without government money, they are able to figure out how best to cut a tree rather than some researcher from the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. telling them how.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would just pick up on our last conversation. That is, it seems to me fundamentally that the idea that the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and others on this House floor are trying to get at is not the idea of should we disenfranchise people within any of our respective congressional districts, but simply the idea of should we offset spending that takes place in the government. As the gentleman has consistently stated, his struggle is not so much with the agricultural bill, but the larger process we find ourselves in. That is a process headed towards a train wreck. I would say this, there was an earlier comment talking about how anybody who would offer amendments to this bill was basically one teeing off on agriculture. I want to associate my words with those of the gentleman from Indiana, because that is absolutely not the case. If Members simply think about the contrast that exists, when I think about the average farmer back home, he is getting up before sunrise, he is maybe having a cup of coffee in a fairly simple room in the back of his house, he is getting in a pick-up truck, he is going off, getting in a Massey Ferguson or John Deere tractor, and he is spending the day outside in the field. He ends up coming back covered with dust. That is one picture. We have another picture of somebody getting up and getting, let us say, in a Volkswagen Jetta or a Rabbit, going off to the administration buildings for agriculture here, and spending their day here. Those are very different days. The bulk of these amendments have been about trying to do something about this huge and bloated bureaucracy that happens to exist within the Department of Agriculture here in Washington, D.C. To me, when we think about the idea of downsizing government, with the Department of Agriculture we have over 100,000 employees, we have 80,000 contract employees. That works out to be one agriculture employee for every 10 farmers. Most of the farmers that I talk to are real independent folks. They are hardworking folks. The idea of them needing a handholder or a babysitter to sort of accompany them, or at least to report on them, throughout the day is not something that makes common sense. One of the amendments that the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) offered yesterday was in fact a proposal to cut simply 12 percent from an increase in administration here in Washington. That seems to be sensible to farmers that I talked to. Another had been to cut $400,000 from the Under Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. Chairman, why the Under Secretary of Agriculture needs another $400,000 does not quite fit with, again, the hard and simple lives that I see for so many farmers back home. Another amendment had been to trim $26 million from space planning; not actually construction of buildings, but just planning on space for the future. Again, these amendments have made sense when we look at the contrast that exists between the life that the farmer leads and the life that somebody in Washington leads working, for instance, for the Department of Agriculture. As to this amendment in particular, as has already been indicated, there are a whole number of different projects around this country, and in fact, I sit on the Committee on Science, and there are a number of projects related to ultraviolet research. So the issue here is this $1 million is duplication. It represents one 100th of 1 percent of the overall agriculture budget, and to say that it will cripple the agriculture budget is not exactly the case. It goes back to the heart of what these amendments have been all about. I have here a letter from Ms. Evelyn Alford, born in 1924. She writes me from Johns Island, South Carolina: ``It really is frightening when one thinks about what the Federal Government can get away with. If the politicians would keep their hands out of the social security fund and use it for what it was originally intended for there wouldn't be a problem with the fund. The government takes money from us and tells us that the money is designated for one thing and they use it for something else. Isn't there a word for that?'' And a P.S., please read this letter. Ms. Alford, I read the letter. This is what these amendments have been all about. They have been about trying to prevent a train wreck that is most certainly headed our way if we do not adopt the proposals of the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). Because as we all know, while agriculture has stayed within the caps, Labor-HHS, there is no way we are going to come up with $5 billion worth of trimming in that account; VA-HUD, over $3 billion worth of trimming in that account. Unless we come up with savings now, we are headed for a train wreck later on.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) specifically asked that those be offsets. That is the heart of the matter that he is dealing with here today, and that is the issue of offsetting versus not. So I think every Member of Congress----

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. The gentlewoman from Ohio is absolutely right; they are apples and oranges. The research goes toward sugar, and our sugar system, as it is configured in the United States, Mr. Chairman, very much benefits this one particular family and basically about 60 other domestic sugar producers in the United States.

Mr. SANFORD. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would just like to interrupt for 2 seconds. For instance, I want to follow up with the brief comment he made on sugar because this issue of sugar makes my blood boil. The idea that we have a research system set up that costs a little guy a lot of money, I think is crazy. I mean, if we look at the sugar subsidy program that is in place, basically it costs the consumer $1.4 billion a year in the form of higher sugar prices. Our sugar prices domestically are about double that of world prices, and all that benefit goes down to the hands of truly a few. I mean, there are about 60 domestic sugar producers in the United States. One of those sugar producers is, for instance, the Fanjul family, who live down in Palm Beach. They are on the Forbes 400 list, they have got yachts, they have got helicopters, and they have got airplanes, and yet they get $60 million a year of personal benefit as a result of this program. So the idea of sending taxpayer money from somebody that is struggling in my district to help fund the life-styles of the rich and famous with the Fanjul family is, to me, not sensible. Now, as I understand it, he may actually withdraw this amendment, but to say there is not another dime that could be cut within ag research I think is a grossly inadequate assumption.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Actually, before I begin with my comments, I would yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. SANFORD. Reclaiming my time, I think there is no question that there are some hard-working, sugar-producing, sugar-beet-producing families throughout the Midwest, but there also happens to be the Fanjul family that controls over 180,000 acres of sugar cane production in south Florida. That is not exactly the family farm, and the fact of the matter is that part of this research will benefit a family like the Fanjuls.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a very simple amendment. All it does is decrease research in education by $5,136,000 for wood utilization research. These are specific grants to seven States, basically throughout the Southeast. The real question that has to be asked with an amendment like this, and with wood utilization overall, is who does it best. If we think that the Federal Government, through grants to universities and private interests, is the best place to figure out where best to utilize wood, then my colleagues will want to vote against this amendment. If, however, we think private enterprise, free enterprise might be more capable at determining where and how wood utilization research ought to take place, then I think my colleagues will want to vote for this amendment. I happen to have a lot of experience in terms of wood utilization. I grew up on a family farm down south of Charleston. My dad died when I was in college and we converted the farm from basically a row crop and from cattle to pine trees. So over the course of my life, my brothers and I have been out behind a tractor, either mechanically or by hand, planting pine trees, throughout our whole life. And that has given me a lot of experience in this world. Because with improved loblollies down in the Southeast, a first thin can be had in 12 years. Now, improved loblollies did not come as a result of wood utilization research grants. In fact, $45 million has been granted in this category since 1985. It came about because people like Westvaco, people like Georgia Pacific, people like Union Camp were going out and doing research on what would create the fastest growing loblolly or slash pine down in the Southeast. Now, what we have in that part of the world are people like Joe Young. Joe Young is an independent timber producer based in Georgetown, South Carolina. And I would ask somebody like Joe Young if he thinks $5 million ought to be spent on wood utilization research or does he think that he, with folks running skidders, folks out in the woods, would have a better idea of, for instance, harvesting the woods. We have people at Union Camp or Georgia Pacific, we have a big plant, actually a Westvaco plant in north Charleston, South Carolina, and the people there put literally millions of dollars each year into basically wood utilization research and coming up with the best ways to mill wood, the best ways to get wood from the stump to the home place. So this is an amendment that is largely a philosophical amendment about where do we think this kind of research takes place best. If we think it takes place best with government, through a Department of Ag grant, then we will want to vote against the amendment. If we think otherwise, we ought to vote for it. Going back to what this money would do, because again I go back to the original premise behind this series of amendments that the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and others are offering, what this amendment is about is simply saying do we want to borrow from Social Security to pay for $5 million worth of wood utilization research; or, if we do not want to think about it in terms of Social Security, we can think about it with competing interests in agriculture itself. This $5 million would buy 250 tractors for farmers across the country. This $5 million would pay the taxes for 2,500 farmers for their taxes on a family farm for 1 year. This $5 million would buy about 500,000 bags of fertilizer for farmers across the country. And what I hear from farmers that I talk to is, if given the choice between an abstract grant that is already being handled by the private sector and money that could actually go to a farmer, they say they would take the second option.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SANFORD

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SANFORD. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wrote down a few different thoughts here that we have all heard. Rome was not built in a day. The first step is the hardest step. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Largent) just mentioned the Chinese proverb, which was the longest journey begins with the first step. Do not do tomorrow what you can do today. To me, this is what the amendment of the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) is all about. As has already been stated numerous times on the House floor, we have a train wreck coming unless we go out and basically reroute this little train. So it is a family fight. It is an internal discussion. But it is a conversation that really has to take place now because the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) mentioned the 302(b) numbers. There is no way we are going to cut $3 billion from VA-HUD. There is no way we are going to cut $5 billion from Labor-HHS. If we are going to get ahead of this curve, we have simply got to do it now. So I would just commend the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). I would say that farmers that I talk to are the most straightforward people in the world. What we are dealing with, again, goes back to what the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Largent) was talking about in terms of the word ``integrity''. What we have is a budget plan that cannot work. When we talk about this idea of a surplus, last year we borrowed $100 billion from Social Security to give us a surplus of about $70 billion. Most folks I talk to say basically we are still $30 billion in the hole if that is the math. A family, if one had to go out and borrow against one's retirement reserves to put gas in the car and food on the table, one would say that family was not running a surplus. In the business world, if one borrowed against one's pension fund assets to pay for the current operation of the company, one would go to jail. That is how we are getting to this surplus. So we are building on very shaky ground. That is what the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) is trying to get us away from with this particular amendment.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, it would seem to me that a lot of those farmers, whether in Oklahoma or Texas or in South Carolina, for that matter, a lot of them did not send in $500,000 worth of taxes. The gentleman's last amendment saved $500,000. I think that is the core of what he is getting at, not filibuster, but $500,000 that they would have had to send to Washington that now they do not.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I want to go to this notion that the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) is somehow filibustering. Because just on the back of the envelope, I grabbed my calculator, and if my colleagues look at the amount of money that this particular amendment would save, it would save $3,900,000. Now, if we take people earning average income, it would take 1,974 taxpayers earning a whole year's worth of income to pay the taxes on $3,900,000. So what we are really talking about is, again, 1,900 people paying taxes for a year. That seems to me to be anything but a filibuster but something very real, because what we are talking about are people's lives and where are they sending money.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANFORD. Not speaking for the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Chairman, but it seems to me the problem in that strategy would be well witnessed by the last vote. The last vote succeeded and saved the taxpayers a number of dollars. There are some things that clearly will work and some that will not, and therefore, the idea of going en bloc might guarantee a defeat of what the gentleman is trying to do, which is save money.

Mr. SANFORD. In other words, Mr. Chairman, I think it is a question that goes straight to the heart of the matter of do we really need to spend this additional $21 million.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would just ask the gentleman this question. How would this strategic space plan in fact help a farmer?