Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Without losing his right to the floor. In terms of order, I gather we are still rotating. I ask unanimous consent that on our side I be able to follow Senator Kennedy. Senator Levin may come, in which case I can talk with him about how to proceed. I ask unanimous consent that on our side I be allowed to follow Senator Kennedy.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, as I said earlier, when Senator Levin came to the floor I would be pleased to yield the floor to him. Senator McCain is here. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Levin be allowed to speak, that we then go in order--I understand Senator McCain wants to speak, and I also know that the Chair, Senator Voinovich, seeks recognition--and I be allowed to speak after Senator Voinovich.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Then Senator Voinovich, and I would follow Senator Voinovich.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. My colleague, Senator Durbin, is in order. I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to speak now. I have the floor, but I don't want to jump ahead of him.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I think we will alternate sides. I ask my colleague from Tennessee, if we are going to rotate, could I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to follow the Senator from Tennessee?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I would not want to name names, and I don't need to name names because the kind of corruption that I am talking about goes way beyond any one officeholder. It is systemic; it is endemic; it is structural; and it is very serious. The fact is big money has hijacked representative democracy. It undercuts representative democracy, and it violates the very principle that each person should count as one and no more than one. Therefore, I would be proud to be included in the ranks of my colleague from Arizona as a Senator who is not naming names. Let me go forward and just present some figures. A study conducted of donors in the 1996 election found the following characteristics of such donors. Ninety-five percent--these are people who contributed over $200--were white; 80 percent were male; 50 percent were over 60 years of age; 81 percent had annual incomes of over $100,000. The population at large in the United States had the following characteristics: Seventeen percent were nonwhite; 51 percent were women; 12.8 percent were over 60; and 4.8 percent had incomes over $100,000. Eighty percent of the people who make contributions of over $200 have incomes over $100,000. And that represents exactly 4.8 percent of the population. If the hard money contributions are increased, as some of my colleagues have suggested, then the picture is going to become even more skewed. If money equals speech, as some have suggested, we can clearly see who is doing all the talking. If money equals speech, then we can clearly see who is doing all the talking. At least those folks are being listened to. The hopes and the dreams and the concerns of the vast majority of the American people are going unheard because the bullhorn of the $1,000 contribution drowns them out. For those who want to raise the limits, why make the bullhorn bigger and louder? Why give greater access and more control to those people who already have too much access and too much control? Again I issue this challenge in anticipation of what might happen. If what we do on the floor of the Senate in a couple of days is raise the contribution level from $1,000 to $3,000--even given the sometimes too low opinion they have of the Senate--people in the country will become even more disillusioned; they won't believe it. I certainly hope we don't do that. I want to talk about the distrust and the dissatisfaction. Mr. President, 92 percent of all Americans believe special interest contributions buy votes of Members of Congress--92 percent; 88 percent believe those who make large contributions get special favors from politicians; 67 percent think their own representatives in Congress would listen to the views of outsiders who made large political contributions before they would listen to their own constituents' views; nearly half of the registered voters in our country believe lobbyists and special interests control the Congress. I will go out on a limb and not antagonize, but perhaps prompt, some response from colleagues. All politicians love children, but we do precious little for them. One of the reasons we have done so little for or about poor children in America--who, by the way, constitute the largest group of poor citizens in our country--might be that they and their parent or parents don't contribute much by way of big contributions and don't have much access. One of the reasons we have done very little to close the gulf between the rich and the poor, one of the reasons we have done so little to combat homelessness, and one of the reasons we have done so little to respond to the concerns of hard-pressed Americans even in these flush economic times is that these are the people who don't pay and don't play. Perhaps the same argument can be made why we have been so generous in providing special breaks for oil companies; we have been so generous in making sure the tobacco industry continues to rule; we have been so generous in making sure we dare not take on the pharmaceutical companies, we dare not take on the insurance industry. With all due respect, I don't know who is kidding whom, but I call this a very serious kind of corruption. I will keep using the word. It is not the wrongdoing of individual office holders, but we have developed a severe, serious imbalance of power in a representative democracy so that the very few in the country dominate the political process and all too often have their way and get exactly what they want and what they need, and the vast majority of people think their voice is not heard.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I yield.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, may I make an inquiry?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I have a question; that is all it is. I ask my colleague from Kentucky, for those of us who want to debate this larger question, how long will you continue with this attack of Senator McCain on the floor? How much longer is that going to happen?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call for regular order.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I don't think I will, but I have been here since early this morning. It depends upon how long my colleague from Utah wants to respond.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I do not object.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Before the Senator from Tennessee leaves, I want to say I don't think he was on the floor too long, and I think his comments were very important. I appreciate what he had to say. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, as we go back and forth, that on the Democratic side Senator Boxer be allowed to speak when it comes back to our side, followed by Senator Cleland.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have some prepared remarks. I don't know how much I will pay attention to it because I have been listening to the debate about corruption. Let me try a different definition, which my colleague from Kentucky, who is very skillful, may want to challenge. But this is at least the way I look at this question. The kind of corruption I think we are talking about is actually much more serious than the wrongdoing of an individual office holder. That is not what I will focus on. I gather that is what some of my colleagues have focused on and questioned. I say it is much more serious. I say it is a systemic corruption, and it is a systemic corruption when there is a huge imbalance between too few people with so much wealth, so much power, so much access, and so much say, and the vast majority of people in the country who don't make the big contributions, aren't the heavy hitters, aren't the investors, and who believe that if you don't pay, you don't play: I think that is the corruption. I think the corruption is that the standard of a representative democracy that says each person should count as one, and no more than one, is violated. If any Senator--Democrat or Republican--should go into any cafe in Minnesota, or around the country, and try to make the argument that, as a matter of fact, because of this system we have-- which I think is really a failure when it comes to any standard of representative democracy--if we were to try to argue, no, it is not true that people who are the investors and make these big contributions don't have too much access and too much say, I think 99 percent of the people in the country would say you are not credible. Of course, that is what is going on. Of course, people make contributions for a variety of different reasons, one of which is to have access and a say. I say to my colleague from Utah, I think it is a bipartisan problem. We don't need to talk about individual cases. And I understand the comments he has tried to make. I see it on both sides of the aisle. Look, both parties will talk about special gatherings we will have with the business community here, or the high-tech community there, or the labor community there. We will have gatherings where big contributors come. That is what is done. We have big dinners, and we are told to come to the dinners. What is the purpose of those dinners? These dinners are with the big contributors. We are told to come, to be there. It seems as though, if you don't come, you have no interest. Both parties give these lectures at caucuses to all of us. And we go. The reason we go is, we believe, given the system we have, people have to raise money, and if you don't come and you are not up for reelection, you believe, when you are up--you hope, given this rotten system we have--there is enough money raised for you, so now you go to help other people. But the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of people in the country don't come to these dinners. The vast majority of people aren't invited to special gatherings and special sessions. The people who are invited by both parties are the big contributors. They are the investors. Come on. You are not going to try to argue on the floor of the Senate that we don't have a problem with systemic corruption, where we have just too few people who make these big contributions, who, as a result, perhaps have too much access and too much say. Let me go out on a limb. It is not just a question of perception. The vast majority of people in our country today believe their concerns about themselves and their families and their communities are of little concern in the corridors of power or the Halls of the Congress in Washington, DC. Do you know what. We have given them entirely too much justification for having that point of view. They are not necessarily wrong. I am not going to have somebody, all of a sudden, ask me to yield for a question and take my head off because it looks as if I am making an individual accusation. I am not going to do that. But I will tell you something right now. I am fully prepared, as a Senator from Minnesota and a political scientist, to tell you I see certain people, who also happen to be the big contributors, who have way too much access here. I don't know whom we think we are kidding. When we debated the telecommunications bill, the anteroom outside the Chamber was packed with people. I could not find truth, beauty, and justice anywhere. Everybody was representing billions of dollars here and billions of dollars there. And when we had a debate about the welfare bill--whatever you think about the welfare bill--where were the poor mothers and children? Where was their powerful lobby? They were nowhere to be found. When we decide where we are going to make deficit reduction and make the cuts, and when we do tax policy, and when we do a lot of other policy, it just so happens that certain folks and certain interests seem to be much better represented than others. I think that is true. I think we can make it better. I think we can do a lot better job of reaching the standard that each person should count as one and no more than one. Certainly, we have corruption, but it is not the wrongdoing of any individual office holder that I know of; it is systemic. When you have this frightening imbalance of power between the elites, the few who make the big contributions and are so well connected, and the majority of the people who basically feel locked out--and they have every reason to feel locked out--that is the problem. I smile at the proposal, which may be one of the amendments to this bill, to raise the contribution limits. I think it is about two-tenths of 1 percent of the top population, or less, who can afford to make a contribution of $1,000 or more. I am not supposed to look up in the galleries, and I certainly do not invite comment from people in the galleries--that would go against the rules--but I bet most of the people in the galleries observing our debate would probably think to themselves: We don't make $1,000 contributions. The fact is, two-tenths of 1 percent are able to make those kinds of contributions. Some people want to now raise it to $3,000. If you want to further skew the imbalance of power, where some people are counted on even more to make the big contributions and most regular people feel left out, then pass that kind of amendment. We will look like fools to people in the country. They will say: My God, the Senate took up reform and today passed an amendment that raised the individual contribution from $1,000 to $3,000--actually from $2,000 to $6,000 through the primary and general election. Most people will scratch their heads and ask: This is the Senate's definition of reform? I don't know, but I think people are being foolish if they don't think that campaign finance reform is an idea--with apologies to Victor Hugo--whose time has long passed. We have seven Republicans supporting this piece of legislation, the McCain-Feingold legislation. It will take only eight Republicans more to assure that we can pass a bill and to stop this effort to block all reform. I hope there will at least be eight Republicans, if not more, who will find the courage to basically vote for reform, who will find the courage to no longer be a part of this effort to block reform, to expand democracy. I want to say to my colleagues, Senator McCain and Senator Feingold, in the spirit of friendship and honesty, this bill, in its present form, is a mere shadow of its former self. I don't think it lights up people around the country. I don't think it is going to bring people to the reform barricade. I don't think it is going to galvanize people or cause people to rise up and really put the pressure on Senators. I wish it were more comprehensive. That is what I am saying. I wish it were much more comprehensive. I think we would be much better off talking about clean money and clean elections and getting as much of this interested big money out of politics and bringing as many people back into politics as possible. I think issue advocacy ads are phony. While I have the floor of the Senate to talk about my experience, especially in 1996, I worry about the ways in which money will shift from one source to the other. I think we can do better, although I will tell you that if we could ban the soft money, the unregulated money, the under-the-table money, the money where there is essentially no accountability in this system, we would still be taking an important step forward. I want to express my fear, and then I want to express my hope. Fear: What could happen is that none of the amendments to strengthen this bill will pass. But there will be a number of amendments to what is a very water-downed version, a very almost timid piece of legislation, but it represents a step forward. I would be proud to support it. But you will get some additional amendments raising the amount of money people can contribute. Gosh knows what else. Then we in the Senate will announce that we did campaign reform for the new millennium, and let's go forward with our special interest parties. I am going to worry that we may end up getting a bill that will have some fine sounding acronyms, such as ``PEOPLE,'' or something like that, which actually won't represent hardly any step forward at all. On the other hand, we have this bill right now, and if we can just deal with the soft money ban, we would be making a real step forward. I want to speak a little bit to this whole question of freedom because it has come up a lot and is raised by a number of colleagues. I want to simply draw from an important book by Eric Foner called, ``The Story of American Freedom.'' He talks about what freedom has meant to people in our country over the years. Freedom is way beyond the kind of definition that we have been given of it. Freedom means the ability to participate. Freedom means to have a place at the table. The definition of freedom of speech is larger than the absence of a regulation that would say we are going to try to put up some kind of framework that doesn't undercut representative democracy. If you think about it, union organizers in the 1930s and working people were talking about freedom to be more involved in the economic decisions that affected their lives. That was the kind of freedom on which they were focused. Then we had a fight for political freedom which began with our own American Revolution. Also, an important part of our history was the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War, then the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments--again, a broad definition of freedom; in the 1950s and 1960s, freedom which had to do with desegregating our schools and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1965. Each time the kind of freedom we were talking about was the freedom to participate in the political life of our country, or the economic life of our country, or the community life of our country. Let me share with you the words of Dr. Gwendolyn Patton at a recent conference at Howard University sponsored by the National Voting Rights Institute. She said: We thought we had scored a people's victory when we ushered in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Our movement of great numbers of ``street heat'' feet wrought a structural change that fundamentally expanded democracy. But we know now that it wasn't enough. Ridding the system of private, special interest money is the unfinished business of the voting rights movement. This movement, like that one, is a revolutionary movement--it is not just a tactical question. It is an ideological struggle, not only for black folks, but for all Americans. We are engaged, to borrow Lincoln's words, in ``a great civil war.'' She goes on to say, that while much was achieved through voter registration of African Americans, Latinos, and others. As a result of these victories we entered the political arena by the millions--but as passive voters. Soon we began to realize that we had to become active participants by running for office if we were going to enact laws and implements policies that would make a change for the better in our lifetime. That's when we discovered another barrier, and while it's not as directly life threatening, it's certainly as formidable as any we have faced before. That's the barrier of money. Dr. Gwendolyn Patton is talking about basically what we have right now, which is a wealth primary. What we are really saying is the very question of who gets to run, the very question of who is likely to get elected, the very question of what issues quite often get considered, the very question of what legislation we are able to pass, the very question of who has access to the political process and who doesn't, is all too often determined by money. The vote is undermined by the dollar. Our elections have become auctions. Some of my colleagues want to talk about raising the contribution limits. Let me just give you some figures. This is a picture of those who contribute the vast majority of money to candidates under the current contribution limits. Believe me, this is a picture that is not a broad slice of America. It is overwhelmingly white, it is overwhelmingly male, and it is overwhelmingly wealthy. These are people who have contributed over $200, and some colleagues want to go from $1,000 to $3,000.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be pleased to yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from Arizona, I thank him for his question. I would be pleased to be challenged by anybody on the floor on this comment. I made a comment that I think is quite similar to what the Senator from Arizona has been trying to say, that we have a systemic corruption that is, unfortunately, far more serious than the wrongdoing of individual office holders--far more serious. It is a corruption when you have a huge imbalance of power between too few people who have so much wealth and money, who make these large contributions, and who have so much more access and influence, versus the majority of people who have concluded that either you pay, and therefore you can play; but if you do not pay, you don't play. They feel locked out. They feel left out. They are disillusioned. They do not believe the political process belongs to them. That is a fundamental corruption of representative democracy. And I say to my colleague it violates the most important principle--that in a representative democracy each person should count as one and no more than one. That is being undermined.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be pleased to.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will not draw one-on-one conclusions about each and every one of those provisions, and I will not make the assumptions that Senators vote one way or the other each and every time because of campaign contributions that a particular Senator may receive, but the overall bias is so much in favor of those large interests that are able to control and invest so much of the money in the political process. That is the problem. One can allow on any one vote for Senators to honestly disagree, and we can't each time say it is because of money, but overall, I don't know anybody in the world who could argue that we don't have a serious problem.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I have deliberately used the word ``corruption'' about 10 times because I think that is exactly what we are talking about: systemic corruption, not the wrongdoing of individual officeholders but the kind of corruption that exists when there is such a huge imbalance and few people have too much wealth and power and the majority of the people are left out of the picture. Let me conclude in two different ways. One, I make a political science point; and, two, I want to make a personal point. I think what we are talking about, in the words of my hero journalist, Bill Moyers, is the soul of democracy. My premise is that political democracy--and I am pleased to be challenged on this if my colleagues choose--has several basic requirements. First, we need to have free and fair elections. It is very hard to say we have them now. That is why people stay at home on election day. That is why they don't participate in the process. Incumbents outspend challengers 8 or 10 to 1 on average. Millionaires spend their personal fortunes to buy access to the airwaves, and special interests buy access to the Congress, all of which warps and distorts our democratic process. That is what is going on. A millionaire can run and spend their own money--and many do, and there are millionaire Senators who are great Senators. Again, it is not a personal point I am making. However, most people ought to be able to run for office even if they are not a millionaire. If you are an incumbent--and I certainly hope this debate is not, in the last analysis, a debate between ins and outs--if you are an incumbent and you are an ``in,'' this system is wired for incumbents. We can go out and raise a lot of money. It is much harder for challengers to raise that money. This is a system that warps and distorts the democratic process, and we do not have free and fair elections. The second criterion: A representative democracy requires the consent of the people. The people of this country, not special interests-big money, should be the source of political power. Government must remain the domain of the general citizenry, not a narrow elite. We have two-tenths of 1 percent of the population that makes contributions of $1,000 or more. I don't know what percentage that is of the overall money we raise--60 percent? I could be wrong, but it is really skewed. Let me put it this way. When I was teaching a class about the Congress, I remember I would talk about the Senate. I did not know people, and I have had a million pleasant surprises. In another speech, another debate, I will talk about all the pleasant surprises. But I made the argument: If you look at who the people are in the Senate, by background characteristics, by their income, by who they are, they certainly are not truly representative of the American population. But the more serious problem is, if you then look at the people back home, the constituents who are the relevant constituents, who can most affect our tenure or our lack of tenure, they are the people with the money. They are the people who can make the contributions so we can then put the ads on television in these hugely expensive, capital-intensive campaigns. The vast majority of people in the country know that and they feel left out. We should hate it. I hope it is OK to say this about my conversation with my colleague from California. Jump up if I am wrong. We were talking about this. I think all of us should hate this system. We should all hate it. On the one hand, I say to myself: I get this. I know why a lot of colleagues do not want any reform, even this modest step of this legislation, which gets at a lot of the unregulated money, the soft money. I say to myself: I can figure this out because it is wired for incumbents. This is not a debate about Democrats versus Republicans, although all the Democrats are going to support this bill, and I hope we will have enough Republicans to pass it and stop the people who are blocking it. Maybe this is a debate between ins and outs and the ins don't want to change it. They don't want to change it because it is wired for us. But then I think to myself: This cannot be because it is degrading getting on the phone calling strangers, people you do not even know. I don't know what is worse, I say to my colleague from California. I don't know what is worse. I am having a little fun on the floor right now. I am on a roll, so I have to talk a little longer. I don't know what is worse, when I call someone up, a perfect stranger, and I call them five times and they never return the call, or I call them up and they say no--I don't know whether that is worse, or if it is worse when they make a contribution, but I don't know them and they don't know me and I don't know why they made a contribution. I am not sure which is worse. The only thing I know is it is torture. It is torture to have to get on this phone and beg and beg and beg for money. It is degrading.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will be pleased. Can I make one brilliant point before I take my colleague's question? On this ins versus outs, I think all of us ins should be supporting the McCain-Feingold legislation and more, for one other reason. The other reason is, when we are up and it is our cycle, we can't do a good job of representing people because every day we have to spend 2 and 3 hours on the phone. We miss debate that we should be involved in; we miss committee work we should be involved in; we miss a lot of work that we should be doing, representing the people of our States. We should want to change this for that reason as well. I will be pleased to yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I am speechless. That doesn't happen that often. Mr. President, I want to finish up. I said that three times. I will finish up. The last criterion is political equality. Everybody ought to have an equal opportunity to participate in the process. That means the values and preferences of citizens, not just those who get our attention through the large contributions, should be considered in the debate. One person, one vote; no more, no less; one person, same influence. Each person counts as one, no more than one. That is the standard. That is what it is all about. That precious principle, that precious standard of representative democracy, is being violated. I have spoken about why I am going to oppose with all my might efforts to raise the limits on contributions. I want to speak about one amendment that I will introduce, which I think is a good amendment, I say to my colleague from Arizona. It is a States rights amendment. It holds harmless--no State certainly could go below the standards we have in Federal campaign finance law, but it would allow States which want to move toward clean money, clean elections, to do so. Arizona has done that; Massachusetts has done that; Maine has done that; Vermont has done that. There are going to be other votes in other States. It would say to those States: If you want to get much of the interested money out and you want to have clean money and clean elections and the people in your State vote for it, you should be able to apply it in Federal elections. If we are not at the point yet where we have the political will so that we can pass more far-reaching reform, I say people in our States, if they are willing to apply this to Federal elections, should be allowed to do so. There is a lot of steam and there is a lot of momentum and a lot of enthusiasm for the clean money/clean election option. I think it is a very important one. Finally, I have to say this because I forgot to mention this earlier. This is the part of the McCain-Feingold legislation that I think is perhaps most important. I remember the 1996 election. I think these issue advocacy ads are a nightmare. I think all of us should hate them. I very much would like to apply this to independent expenditures as well. I want to be clear about it. But in Minnesota, it was a barrage of these phony issue advocacy ads, where they do not tell you to vote for or against; they just bash you and then they say: Call Senator So- and-so. They are soft money contributions with no limits on how much money is raised, no limits on how the money is raised. It could be in $100,000 contributions, $200,000 contributions, and make no mistake about it, this is in both parties. These big soft money contributors have a tremendous amount of access and way too much influence in both parties. So with one stroke, it would be a wonderful marriage. We could get some of this poison politics off television. We could get some of these phony ads off television. We could build more accountability, and we would make both political parties, I think, more accountable to the public. This debate is about whether or not something we all value and love, which is our representative democracy, is going to continue to be able to function. It is the most important debate we are going to have. That is the core question, the core issue, the core problem. I hope there will be a vote for McCain-Feingold. I hope we can strengthen it. I hope those who oppose reform and continue to block efforts will not be successful. I think people in our country are counting on us to vote for democracy. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Under the unanimous consent agreement, I have up to 30 minutes. I do not think I will need to take that time. I want to comment on the conference report. I thank the Senator from Missouri and the Senator from Maryland for their work. I am going to vote for this conference report. Given the constraints they have been working under, and the framework they had to work within, they did a yeoman job, and I thank them. I want to make three comments and I think I can be brief. First of all, on the veterans' health care budget, it is true; we went up by $1.7 billion above the President's request. But if you look at the last 3 or 4 or 5 years of flatline budgets, which means really the veterans' health care budget was not even keeping up with inflation, we are essentially still not very far ahead. I believe the veterans organizations, AMVETS and VFW and Paralyzed Veterans of America and Disabled American Veterans, were right in their independent budget, which called for us to bump up the President's request, which was inadequate, by $3 billion. We had a sense-of-the-Senate vote on that, where every single Senator voted for that recommendation. I think we are going to have to do much better next year. I think this was progress. I thank my colleagues for their fine work, but it is my honest to goodness judgment this is underfunded; there are some real gaps. In particular, we have the challenge of a veterans community that is growing older. How are we going to provide the care for this community? We still have the challenge of too long a waiting list and too long a distance for people to drive. I believe we had an amendment on the floor, with Senator Johnson, to go up $3 billion. I wish we had because I think there are still going to be some unmet needs. That was my first point. The second point is one about which I feel very strongly. Senator Mikulski, in particular, has been very helpful. But it is the same moving picture shown over and over again, this time just on a sense-of- the-Senate amendment. For about 5 or 6 years, I have been talking about the importance of getting some compensation for atomic veterans. These are veterans who went to States such as Utah and Nevada. They went to ground zero. Our Government asked them to be there. Our Government never told them they were in harm's way, didn't give them any protective gear. It is horrible what has happened to them. The incidence of cancer is quite understandable. The incidence of illness and disease, not just for these veterans but for their children and even their grandchildren, is frightening. It is scary. You cannot do dose reconstruction. There is no way they can prove their case. I cannot understand why the Senate and the House of Representatives cannot find it in its collective heart a way to provide some compensation for these veterans just as we did with Agent Orange with the Vietnam vets. We were never able to prove one way or the other the connection between Agent Orange and lung cancer. We said we are going to make this a presumptive disease. We are going to argue the presumption is this was caused by Agent Orange. I have had amendments passed and then they have been taken out in conference committee. This time I wanted to get a good vote on a sense- of-the-Senate amendment because I could not legislate on this appropriations bill. I got 75 or 76 votes which said, at the very minimum, we would include three diseases: lung cancer, colon cancer, and tumors of the brain and the central nervous system. There are several thousand of these veterans. They are older. They feel so betrayed. This is the classic example of our Government having lied to these veterans. I cannot understand, for the life of me, why a sense-of-the-Senate amendment that is all it was--should have been taken out in conference committee. I thank my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, for their support. But I want to say on the floor of the Senate, next year--I think I can get the support from Senator Mikulski and Senator Bond and I hope everybody here--we will be ready. One way or another, we are going to get this through. It has been 6 or 7 years. I do not think we can say to these veterans we do not have the resources; we cannot give you any compensation. If we say that, we are just going to say: We don't care what happened to you. We don't care what happened to you. We don't care what happened to you. It has been going on year after year after year. I wanted to express my outrage that we cannot do better. I will be back next year. Hopefully, we can get better support and get this done in authorization and appropriations. It is a matter of justice. It has been a shameful history. What we have done to these people is a shameful chapter in the history of our country. I hope we in the Senate and the House can find it in our hearts to provide them with compensation. It will mean a great deal to these veterans and their families. Finally, I thank both colleagues. I do not think they could do any better with these appropriations bills, given the context. But the other issue, because this is VA housing, is, for example, the vouchers in a State such as Minnesota. It does not help at all. We have no vacancies. The fact is, with the limits on what a family would be eligible for, right now the housing is so high that what housing is there is above what the voucher plan will cover. It just doesn't help us at all. I thank my colleagues because they are trying to do everything they can, everything humanly possible. But I am predicting there are going to be a lot of articles over this next year about housing prices. I hope they will be front page stories because for so many families, they just cannot find any affordable housing. It is just not there. The vouchers don't help because it is not there. I will give one example and then finish up. Sheila and I do a lot of work with women who have been victims of family violence, domestic violence. They go to shelters. That is the first courageous step, to get out of that home. It is a dangerous place. Then they are in the shelters. Then where else do they go? There is no affordable housing. In fact, a lot of the battered women's shelters cannot even take some of the battered women because other women and children who cannot afford housing and are homeless actually call shelters and say they have been battered because they are looking for shelter. I understand the importance of the vouchers, but in many of the communities in Minnesota and around the country, it is not going to help at all. There is no housing. It is not available, so the voucher does not help. Housing has become so high that the voucher, which covers the difference between the fair market value and 25 or 30 percent of their monthly income, will not do any good because the fair market value is above the value of what the vouchers will cover. We have a real crisis. Both my colleagues know this. It is unbelievable how expensive housing is. The lack of affordable housing for families in our country is a huge issue and not just in the cities, but also in the suburbs and in rural areas as well. Next year, we are going to get ourselves out of the straitjacket and the framework and make more of the investment. Senator Bond and Senator Mikulski did a yeoman job. They did exceptional work. I thank them. I wanted to lay out these three points. I yield the floor. environmental data management

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask my colleague, Senator McCain--I am actually going to take about 15 minutes at the most--if he wants to precede me?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me, first of all, repeat what I said on the floor yesterday, which is that I am going to support this emergency package, both the financial emergency package and the disaster relief emergency package. I am going to do so because, may I say for the Record, Tracy Beckman tells me this will mean $620 million in AMTA payments to Minnesota, and this will be important for some 60,000-plus producers. I hasten to add that most of this money to farmers will end up being used to pay back bankers. I also am going to support this because I want to get some assistance out there. I don't think we are going to have enough with this $8.7 billion package. I don't think there is enough for disaster relief. Clearly, our farmers in the Northeast are saying we don't figure in. And in northwest Minnesota where we have had so much wet weather and some farmers haven't been able to get a crop in or much of a crop in, I fear there won't be enough assistance. But I think that when we are at least talking about something we can pass. We need to get this to the President and have President sign it in order to get some of this financial assistance out to our communities within the next couple of weeks. For this reason, I am going to support it. I also want to say that I hope to have to never vote for such a package again. I believe these disaster relief bills are becoming a disaster. I think they are a complicated way of acknowledging the fact that we have a failed agricultural policy. Who would ever have dreamed that we would have spent over $19 billion now to keep farmers going post-Freedom to Farm bill. This doesn't make a lot of sense. The producers in my State, the farmers in my State, much less the rural communities, the small businesses that are affected by this, the implement dealers, and those who sell tools all say: What we want is a decent price. I want to make it real clear that I wish--though I appreciate the work, I don't think there is any Senator on the floor who has any unkind words to say about Senator Cochran, publicly or privately, because I think he is held in such high regard--I wish we were doing this through a somewhat different mechanism because I fear that too much of the support will be in reverse relation to need. I think we will have yet another supplementary emergency package to deal with, especially disaster relief because there is not enough in here. In any case, we ought to deal with the root of the problem. The family farmers in my State of Minnesota and in the rural communities that have been so affected by this economic convulsion in agriculture-- it is a depression in agriculture--I want to see a new policy. The Freedom to Farm bill has become the ``freedom to fail'' bill. I do not hear very many Senators talking any longer about staying the course. We have to change the course of agricultural policy. I make a plea on floor of the Senate that before we finish, before we adjourn, before we leave Washington, before we go back to our States, we pass legislation to change farm policy; that we pass some legislation to deal with the price crisis; that we pass legislation to give our farmers and our producers some leverage in the marketplace so they can make a decent price and so they can support their families. The plea or the cry in rural America from family farmers is nothing more than to say for all you people who believe there should be a family wage, or a living wage, and a parent or parents ought to be able to make enough of a wage to support their families, well, those of us who produce the food and the fiber for families in this country ask for the same thing. That is what this is all about. I want to translate this crisis in personal terms. Lynn Jostock is a Waseca, MN, dairy farmer. He tells his story: I have four children. My 11-year-old son Al helps my husband and I by doing chores. But it often is too much to expect of someone so young. For instance, one day our son came home from school. His father asked Al for some help driving the tractor to another farm about 3 miles away. Al was going to come home right afterward. But he wound up helping his father cut hay. Then he helped rake hay. Then he helped bale hay. My son did not return home until 9:30 p.m. He had not yet eaten supper. He had not yet done his schoolwork. We don't have other help. The price we get at the farm gate isn't enough to allow us to hire any farmhands or to help our community by providing more jobs. And it isn't fair to ask your 11-year-old son to work so hard to keep the family going. When will he burn out? How will he ever want to farm? Gary Wilson, an Odin farmer, says: Received the church newsletter in the mail. What's normally to the entire congregation had been addressed to only farmers. The newsletter said farmers should quit farming if it was not profitable. If larger, corporate-style farms were the way to turn a profit, the independent farmers should let go and find something else to do. ``What he doesn't understand is that the farmers are his congregation. If we go, he won't have a church.'' Oh, how right Gary Wilson is. The point is, if we continue with this failed policy, we are going to lose a generation of producers. We are going to see this convulsion in agriculture play out to the point where we have a few large conglomerates that control all phases of the food industry. Believe me, if you have just a few landowners versus a lot of family farmers who live and buy in the community and invest in the community, there won't be the support for the church. There won't be the support for the synagogue. There won't be the support for the small business. There won't be the support for the school system. Darrel Mosel is a Gaylord farmer. Farming for 18 years. When he started farming in Sibley County, which is one of Minnesota's largest agricultural counties, there were 4 implement dealers in Gaylord, the county seat. Today, there are none. There's not even an implement dealer in all of Sibley County. The same thing has happened to feed stores and grain elevators. Since the farm policies of the 1980s and the resulting reduction in prices, farmers don't buy new equipment they either use baling wire to hold things together or quit. ``The farm houses have people in them but they don't farm. There's something wrong with that.'' That is a direct quote from Darrel. John Doe--this is a farmer who wants to remain anonymous: This family has gone through a divorce and the father and three children are operating the farm. The father has taken an off farm job to make payments to the bank and has his 12 year old son and 14 year old daughter are operating the farming operation, unassisted while he is away at work. The neighbors have threatened to turn him in to human services for child abandonment and so he had to have his 18 year old daughter quit work and stay at home to watch the two younger children. The 12 year old boy is working heavy farm equipment, mostly alone. He is driving these big machines and can hardly reach the clutch on the tractor. It's this or lose the farm. I could go on and on, but I will not. I want to repeat what I have said, which is that I am going to support this emergency assistance package. But all it does, at best, is enable farmers to live to farm another day. The truth of the matter is it isn't going to help the farmers who it needs to help the most. In addition, I am going to support it because at least it gets some assistance to some families. It doesn't do anything for the small businesses. Most important of all, farmers simply will not have any future. Ken and Lois Schaefer from Greenwald, MN, will not receive much assistance. Ken and Lois are one of the few small, independent hog operations still remaining, with roughly 400 hogs. They raise feeder hogs and sows. Lois has an off-farm job to make ends meet. Ken is considering an additional job. This is common. People who farm have jobs off the farm; it is unbelievable stress on the family. There is no choice if they are to survive. A recent hog operation opened near the Schaefer farm and is seeking employees. Ken's neighbor started working part time for the hog factory. Ken and Lois will not receive much assistance; there is not near enough livestock assistance. However, Ken and Lois do not necessarily want assistance. What they want is a decent price for their hogs. They ask the question: How can it be that we as hog producers are facing extinction and these packers are in hog heaven? How can it be that we as hog producers are facing extinction and the IBPs and the Cargills and the ConAgras are making record profits? Several weeks ago, I spoke about the crisis that is ravaging rural America. I told my colleagues about farmers I visited in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, and Texas. Today, I want to talk about why there is this convulsion, why every month more and more family farms are put on the auction block; why every month more and more family farmers are forced to give up their way of life; why they lose their work; why they are losing their hope; and why they are sometimes losing their communities. We ought to act now. I have said to the majority leader three or four times that I want an opportunity to bring to the floor of the Senate some legislation that will alleviate the suffering. I want to talk about this today. I want the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on a moratorium on any further mergers or acquisition of any huge agribusiness. We have a frightening concentration of market power. These big conglomerates have muscled their way to the dinner table and are driving out family farmers. At the very minimum, we can put into effect the moratorium and have a study so over the next 18 months we can come up with legislation while this moratorium is in place that will put some competition and free enterprise back into the food industry, giving our family farmers, our producers, a fighting chance. Several weeks ago I spoke on the floor at some length about the crisis that is ravaging rural America today. I told my colleagues about some of the farmers I've visited with in Minnesota, in Iowa, in Texas, and around the country who are on the brink of financial disaster because of record low farm prices. Farmers from all around the country were in Washington, DC, that week because they know that the future of the family farm is at stake. Every month, more and more family farms are put on the auction block. Every month, more and more family farmers are being forced to give up their life's work, their homes, and their communities. We must act now. In Minnesota, about 6,500 farmers are expected to go out of business this year. That's about eight percent of all farmers in my state. In northwest Minnesota, which has been hit especially hard by this crisis, about 11 percent are expected to go under. An August 1999 survey of Minnesota County Emergency Boards reported that more Minnesota farmers are quitting or retiring with fewer farmers taking their place; more Minnesota farm families are having to rely on non-farm income to stay afloat; and the number of Minnesota farmers leaving the land will continue to increase unless and until farm prices improve. We must act now. Today I want to take a step back and look at the larger picture. I want to examine what is going on in American agriculture and why; what it means for farmers and for us as a society; and, most importantly, what we can do about it. I want to talk about record low farm prices. I want to talk about record high levels of market concentration and the absence of effective competition in almost every major commodity market. I want to talk about the failure of our antitrust enforcement authorities to do much of anything about this. I want to talk about the need for Congress to take immediate action to restore competitive markets in agriculture and give farmers more equal bargaining power against corporate agribusiness. And I also want to make the case for a moratorium on large agribusiness mergers and acquisitions, effective immediately, which I have recently proposed along with Senator Dorgan. In my travels around Minnesota and around the country, I've found that many people are not even aware of the crisis afflicting rural America today. Even fewer have any idea to what extent market concentration and anti-competitive practices have substantially eliminated competition in agriculture. So let me just start by ticking off a few statistics that some of my colleagues may find surprising. In the past decade and a half, an explosion of mergers, acquisitions, and anti-competitive practices has raised concentration in American agriculture to record levels. The top four pork packers have increased their market share from 36 percent to 57 percent. The top four beef packers have expanded their market share from 32 percent to 80 percent. The top four flour millers have increased their market share from 40 percent to 62 percent. The market share of the top four soybean crushers has jumped from 54 percent to 80 percent. The top four turkey processors now control 42 percent of production. 49 percent of all chicken broilers are now slaughtered by the four largest firms. The top four firms control 67 percent of ethanol production. The top four sheep, poultry, wet corn, and dry corn processors now control 73 percent, 55 percent, 74 percent, and 57 percent of the market, respectively. The four largest grain buyers control nearly 40 percent of elevator facilities. By conventional measures, none of these markets is really competitive. According to the economic literature, markets are no longer competitive if the top four firms control over 40 percent. In all the markets I just listed, the market share of the top four firms is 40 percent or more. So there really is no effective competition in the processing markets for pork, beef, chicken, turkeys, ethanol, flour, soybean, wet corn, dry corn and grain. This development is not entirely new. In some sectors of agriculture, there was already considerable horizontal concentration at the turn of the century. Pork and beef slaughtering and processing were dominated by Wilson, Armour and Swift. That's why Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act in 1921. But now, with this explosion of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, marketing agreements, and anti-competitive behavior by the largest firms, these and other commodity markets are becoming more and more concentrated by the day. Recently the Justice Department approved a modified merger between Cargill and Continental. Just a few weeks ago Smithfield Foods, a major meat processor, announced the acquisition of Murphy Family Farms, a giant hog producer. DuPont is buying Pioneer Hi-Bred International. ADM is buying more and more of IBP. Among seed companies and input suppliers, there has been more than $15 billion worth of combinations in the last three years. In my hands I have a monthly listing of new mergers, acquisitions, and other agribusiness deals through March 1999. Let me just read a sample of some of the headlines to give you a sense of how rapidly this concentration is taking place. March 1999: Dupont to buy Pioneer. Farmland-Cenex to discuss combining grain operations. Smithfield to acquire Carroll's. February 1999: Three California dairies preparing for merger. December 1998: Monsanto completes Dekalb purchase. Smithfield gains control of Schneider. Cargill buys Bunge's Venezuelan units. November 1998: Cargill buys out rival grain operation; deal boosts firm's hold on market. Dow Chemical completes purchase of Mycogen. IBP buys appetizer business in expansion move. And so on. The effect of this surge of concentration is that agribusiness conglomerates have increased their bargaining power over farmers. When farmers have fewer buyers to choose from, they have less leverage to get a good price. Anybody who has been to an auction knows that you get a better price with more bidders. Moreover, when farmers have fewer buyers to choose from, agribusinesses can more easily dictate conditions that farmers have to meet. And fewer buyers means farmers often have to haul their production longer distances, driving up their transportation costs. In addition to this horizontal concentration among firms in the same line of business, we are also seeing another kind of concentration. It's called vertical integration. Vertical integration is when one firm expands its control over the various stages of food production, from development of the animal or plant gene, to production of fertilizer and chemical inputs, to actual production, to processing, to marketing and distribution, to the supermarket shelf. The poultry industry is already vertically integrated, by and large. 95 percent of all chicken broilers are produced under production contracts with fewer than 40 firms. Now the same process is occurring in the pork industry. Pork packers are buying up what's called captive supply--hogs that they own or have contracted for under marketing agreements. If these trends continue, grain and soybean production may soon be vertically integrated just like poultry. The problem with this kind of vertical concentration is that it destroys competitive markets. Potential competitors often never know the sale price for goods at any point in the process. That's because there never is a sale price until the consumer makes the final purchase, since nothing is being sold outside the integrated firm. It's hard to have effective competition if prices are not publicly available. Today there is essentially no price discovery, and therefore no effective competition, for chicken feed, day old chicks, live chicken broilers, turkeys and eggs. If vertical integration of pork and dairy continues at the current pace, we can expect much the same in those industries. Vertical concentration stacks the deck against farmers, as we can see clearly in the case of the rapidly consolidating hog industry. An April 1999 report by the Minnesota Land Stewardship Project found that: Packers' practice of acquiring captive supplies through contracts and direct ownership is reducing the number of opportunities for small- and medium-sized farmers to sell their hogs; With fewer buyers and more captive supply, there is less competition for independent farmers' hogs and insufficient market information regarding price; and Lower prices result. Even the USDA's Western Corn Belt hog procurement study showed price discrimination against smaller farmers. Smaller farmers were paid lower base prices, lower premiums, and they were given little or no access to long-term marketing contracts. The combined effect of these two different kinds of concentration is to put enormous market power in the hands of a handful of global agribusiness giants. Not only do these conglomerates dominate processing for all the major commodities, but the same firms appear among the top four or five processors for several different commodities. ConAgra, for example, is among the Top Four for beef, pork, turkeys, sheep, and seafood, and it's number five for chicken broilers. To make matters worse, many of these firms are vertically integrated. Cargill, for example, is among the Top Four firms trading grain, producing animal feed, feeding hogs and beef, and processing hogs and beef. Farmers clearly see the connection between this concentration and lower farm prices. Leland Swensen, president of the National Farmers Union, recently testified that The increasing level of market concentration, with the resulting lack of competition in the marketplace, is one of the top concerns of farmers and ranchers. At most farm and ranch meetings, market concentration ranks as either the first or second in priority of issues of concern. Farmers and ranchers believe that lack of competition is a key factor in the low commodity prices they are receiving. Well, no wonder. How else can you explain the record profits that the large agribusiness conglomerates are racking up, at the same time low prices are causing a depression for family farmers? IBP's earnings in 1998, for example, were up 62 percent. In the second quarter of this year, they were up a whopping 126 percent. Packing plants, food processors and retailers are all reporting record profits. While corporate agribusiness grows fat, farmers are facing lean times. The commodity price index is the lowest since 1987. Hog prices are at their lowest since 1972. Cotton and soybean prices are the lowest they've been since the early 1970s. Feed grain prices are the lowest they've been since the mid-1980s. Food grain prices are at the lowest levels since the early 1990s. Agricultural income in the mid- Western states is predicted to fall between 15 and 60 percent this year. Current prices are so low that many family farmers are lucky to stay in business. Market prices are lower than their cost of production. The value of field crops is expected to be more than 24 percent lower in 1999 than it was in 1996--42 percent lower for wheat, 39 percent lower for corn, and 26 percent lower for soybeans. But farmers' expenses aren't falling by the same amount. In fact, they're not falling at all. Farmers can't cash flow if their selling prices are falling through the floor while their buying prices are shooting through the roof. It all comes down to market power. Corporate agribusinesses are using their market power to lower prices, without passing those price savings on to consumers. The gap between what consumers pay for food and what farmers get paid is growing wider. According to the USDA, the so-called farm-to-retail price spread--the difference between the farm value and the retail price of food--rose 4.7 percent in 1997. From 1984 to 1998, prices paid to farmers fell 36 percent, while consumer food prices actually increased by 3 percent. In other words, the farmer's share of farm profit is falling. The farmer share of every retail dollar has fallen from 50 percent in 1952 to 25 percent today. By the same token, the profit share of farm input, marketing, and processing companies is rising. The agribusiness conglomerates claim that this is because they're putting more ``added value'' into food products. Actually, it looks like they're taking additional value out. Some people have blamed low farm prices on other factors, such as declining exports. That's a big debate that will have to wait for another day. But let me just say this. We can hardly expect export growth to translate into higher prices for American farmers if the multinational agribusinesses still have enough bargaining power to keep farm prices down. As Jim Braun, a third-generation Iowa farmer, wrote recently, ``Unfortunately, increased exports do not necessarily mean more money for farmers. IBP has doubled exports since 1990 and quadrupled profits in 1998, while it destroyed family farmers by paying below Depression- era prices for hogs. If Cargill, ConAgra, or ADM, the three major grain processors and exporters, could sell corn overseas for $20 per bushel, they could still pay American farmers below the cost of production simply because they have the power to do so.'' What we do know for sure is that low farm prices are driving thousands of farmers into bankruptcy, and concentration is helping to depress prices. That's reason enough why we should take immediate action to address the problem of concentration. But there are plenty of other reasons why we should be concerned about concentration in agriculture. First of all, concentration is bad for the environment. When large- scale corporate feedlots replace family-size farms, they create large amounts of waste in a relatively small space. That puts enormous strain on the local ecology. The lower prices resulting from unequal bargaining power also put pressure on farmers to abandon careful soil and water conservation practices. There's another reason why we should be concerned about concentration in agriculture. The price effects of unequal bargaining power are tremendously destructive of community and family values. This connection was made explicit in an infamous 1962 report by the Committee for Economic Development, whose members included some of the biggest food companies. Amazingly, the Committee had this to say about community and family values. They recommended investment ``in projects that break up village life by drawing people to centers of employment away from the village . . . because village life is a major source of opposition to change.'' They went on to say, ``Where there are religious obstacles to modern economic progress, the religion may have to be taken less seriously or its character changed.'' So the largest agribusinesses were afraid that ``village life'' and religion would stand in the way of modern economic progress. But what exactly did they mean by the term ``modern economic progress"? It turns out they meant the bankruptcy and forced emigration of two million farmers. That's what their report recommended. These agribusiness giants were advocating lower price supports for farmers in order to lower farm prices. And the primary benefits of lowering farm prices, they argued, would be to lower input prices for the food companies, to increase foreign trade, and to depress wage levels by putting two million farmers out of business and dumping them into the urban labor pool. There's a third reason why we should be concerned about concentration in agriculture. As the Committee for Economic Development report makes clear, this concentration is harmful to the economic development of rural communities. It's been estimated that when a farm goes under, three to five jobs are destroyed. For every six farm failures, one rural business shuts down. The reason is pretty simple. When production is controlled by more non-local corporations, profits don't get reinvested in the community. When family businesses operate local farms, elevators, and grocery stores, they plough profits right back into other local businesses. Those revenues circulate locally three or four times, creating what's called a multiplier effect. But there's no multiplier effect when non- local corporations drain profits out of the community. Rural communities become little more than a source of cheap labor inputs for agribusiness multinationals--to be purchased as cheaply as possible in competition with low-wage labor overseas. Obviously, this kind of concentration is not good for the social and economic health of rural communities. According to the Nebraska Center for Rural Affairs, virtually all researchers have found that social conditions deteriorate in rural communities when farm size and absentee ownership increase. Studies have shown that communities surrounded by large corporate farms suffer from greater income polarization--with a few wealthy elites, a majority of poor laborers, and virtually no middle class. The tax base shrinks and the quantity and quality of their public services, public education, and local government declines. John Crabtree of the Center for Rural Affairs sums it up this way: ``Replacing mid-size farms with big farms reduces middle-class entrepreneurial opportunities in farm communities, at best replacing them with wage labor. . . . A system of economically viable, owner- operated family farms contributed more to communities than systems characterized by inequality and large numbers of farm laborers with below-average incomes and little ownership or control of productive assets.'' He concludes that ``Societies in which income, wealth, and power are more equitably distributed are generally healthier than those in which they are highly concentrated.'' I think this last point is true not only of rural communities, but of our country as a whole. ``Societies in which income, wealth, and power are more equitably distributed are generally healthier than those in which they are highly concentrated.'' In other words, we all do better when we all do better. When we have a thriving middle class, including a thriving family farm sector, our economy performs better. Our democracy functions better. The idea that concentrations of wealth, of economic power, and of political power are unhealthy for our democracy is a theme that runs throughout American history, from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson to the Progressive Era to the New Deal. But this idea was perhaps most forcefully expressed by the People's Party of the late 1800s, sometimes called the Populists. The People's Party embodied popular disgust with rampant monopolization and concentration of economic and political power. The Populist platform from the 1892 nominating convention in Omaha declared, ``The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind.'' People's Party founder Tom Watson thundered, ``The People's Party is the protest of the plundered against the plunderers.'' In the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, the danger of concentrated economic power was widely recognized and hotly debated. The Populists argued that a free and democratic society cannot prosper with such concentration of power and inequalities of wealth. As the great Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, ``We can have democracy in this country, or we can have wealth in the hands of a few. We can't have both.'' The Populists were reacting to a concentration of wealth, economic power, and political power that was remarkably similar to what we've experienced in the late 1900s. Today, despite wage gains for low-income workers over the past couple years, inequality in America has reached record levels. According to reports by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, the gap between rich and poor is greater today than at any time since the Great Depression. CBO data shows that after-tax income is more heavily concentrated among the richest one percent of the population than it has been since 1977. CBO projects that in 1999 the richest 1 percent of Americans (2.7 million people) will receive as much after-tax income as the poorest 38 percent (100 million people) put together. At the same time, we are witnessing the biggest wave of mergers and economic concentration since the late 1800s. Not only in agriculture, but in media and communications, banking, health care, airlines, energy, hi-tech, defense, you name it. There were 4,728 reportable mergers in 1998, compared to 3,087 in 1993; 1,529 in 1991; and a mere 804 in 1980. And as Joel Klein, head of Justice Department's Antitrust Division, has pointed out, the value of last year's mergers equaled the combined value of all mergers from 1990 through 1996 put together. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the political scientist E. J. Dionne, and the philosopher Michael Sandel, among others, have all drawn parallels between the conditions of today and the heyday of monopoly power in the 19th Century. In the Gilded Age, the welfare of farmers, rural communities, and small businesses was sacrificed for the economic interests of burgeoning bank, railroad, and grain monopolies. Today, the welfare and future of our family farmers and rural communities is being sacrificed to the economic interests of near-monopoly global agribusiness. While the Sherman Act was written by a Republican senator and signed into law by a Republican president, in 1896 William McKinley and the Republicans openly sided with the titans of industry and decided to write off rural America. They felt that the ``social reformers, agrarian rebels, church leaders, and others who challenged the authority of the industrial giants'' were being hopelessly sentimental, as E.J. Dionne puts it. The McKinley Republicans presumed that monopoly interests were on the right side of history, of economic progress, and of civilization. Interestingly enough, Populist demands were initially rebuffed with many of the same arguments that have become conventional wisdom today. The Populists were told that monopoly power was the legitimate outcome of free markets, that concentration was the inevitable result of technological progress, that concentration represented economic efficiency, and that there were no viable alternatives. These arguments are no truer today than they were at the turn of the century. The current trend towards concentration in agriculture is not the product of the ``free market,'' nor of Adam Smith's invisible hand. For starters, with no effective competition in the major commodity markets, these can hardly be held up as models of free market competition. What they really stand for is market failure. In any event, these near-monopolies were not created by the free market at all. They were created by government, just like the railroad monopolies of the 19th century. Instead of Adam Smith's invisible hand, we are seeing the hand of multinational food conglomerates, in the words of Iowa farmer Jim Braun, ``acting inside the glove of government.'' The role of government in creating and fostering these monopolies is probably most obvious in the context of intellectual property rights, such as patents and copyrights. These are monopolies by definition. The whole point of intellectual property protection is to prevent competition. Without that patent protection, there would be a lot more companies selling seed and other inputs to the farmer, there would be a lot more competition, and the farmer would pay much lower prices. And because of that protection, intellectual property rights generate outsized profits and market power. My point is not that these patent protections are a good thing or a bad thing. The answer will probably depend on a lot of different factors in each particular case. My point is that they are not an example of the free market at work. On the contrary, these are monopolies formally granted by the government. The issue here is not just competition for the patented goods, but barriers to competition for the entire agribusiness industry. If one of these conglomerates engages in high-handed behavior, new businesses could normally be expected to enter the market and steal its market share. But smaller competitors can't enter the market if the barriers to entry are too high. And intellectual property rights are a mighty high barrier. In fact, one of the motors driving consolidation of agribusiness today is biotechnology. Soon biotech companies will be able to control the entire food production chain with their genetics. Already Monsanto, DuPont, and Novartis are gobbling up smaller biotech companies' market share, patent rights, and customer base. And biotech patent monopolies on plant and animal genomes will be a nearly insurmountable barrier to market entry in the future. Professor Bill Heffernan, who was commissioned by the National Farmers Union to study these trends, projects that the entire agricultural sector will soon consolidate into a small number of ``food chain clusters,'' revolving around intellectual property firms. The number of these clusters will be limited by the small number of firms with intellectual property protection and by extremely high barriers to market entry. A handful of vertically integrated food chain clusters are already poised to control food production from the gene to the supermarket shelf. Professor Heffernan identifies three existing food cluster chains: Cargill-Monsanto, ConAgra, and Novartis-ADM. He predicts that another two or three will eventually develop. Smaller seed firms, independent producers and other independent businesses will face a dilemma. Either they join one of alliances to obtain inputs and sell their production, or they go out of business. The emergence of these titanic food conglomerates is not the inevitable outcome of technological progress, but of conscious policy choices. Our government-funded research programs, for example, have chosen to fund expensive technologies that generate greater sales for the largest agribusinesses and diminish the role of farmers in the production of food. Government support for private-sector monopoly over the ``terminator gene'' is a good example of the bias inherent in these choices. The terminator gene is a gene that can be inserted in plants to make their seeds sterile. It forces farmers to buy new seeds every year instead of reusing their own. This is not a neutral technology. It raises the income of the seed suppliers and intellectual property holders by forcing farmers to pay more for seed. As Lee Swenson of the National Farmers Union recently has testified, ``Biotechnology and the terminator gene have put the farmer at the mercy of the food cluster for seed to plant crop. If the firms in the processing stage of the cluster require specific genetic material and the farmer cannot get that seed, the farmer has no market access.'' Yet this technology was developed with support from none other than the USDA. While choosing to invest in technologies such as the terminator gene, the government has generally failed to invest in technology that would benefit the family farmer. Research dollars have not been directed towards technologies that would reduce farmers' costs for capital or inputs, for example, or help them produce higher value products. Dr. Neil Harl of Iowa State University also calls for more government support of cutting edge seed varieties that should be made available to smaller seed companies, helping them compete against the emerging food clusters. Instead, Congress has chosen to cut funding for publicly available research in biotechnology. One seed company CEO, when asked what farmers could do to resist the growing vertical integration of agriculture, said, ``Absolutely nothing, because these are property rights owned by the companies, so the farmer is going to become more and more at the mercy of the few who own intellectual properties. Again, it goes back to the shortsightedness of funding basic research in such a parsimonious fashion. Without government funding, companies are going to fund research and control it.'' Economic concentration is not dictated by economic efficiencies any more than it is by free markets and technological progress. In the late 1800s, John D. Rockefeller made the classic argument for the economic efficiencies of monopoly power. He claimed that Standard Oil's monopoly was good for the public because it created efficiencies that could be passed along to the consumer in the form of lower oil prices. That argument wasn't compelling then, and it's not compelling today. First of all, efficiency is not what's driving the trend towards concentration in agriculture. Research by Iowa State University economist Mike Duffy shows no further economies of scale beyond 600 acres of row crops and about 150 sows. But the most rapidly growing farming operations in Iowa are much larger than that, so economies of scale cannot be driving their expansion. One Iowa farmer writes, ``Today efficiency and cost of production have nothing to do with determining which farmer will survive as a food producer.'' The most important factor is probably the special relationships the integrating firm has with other businesses. In industries undergoing vertical integration, especially, farmers who don't have special relationships with feed or slaughtering firms often have to pay more for inputs and have more problems selling their product. And smaller farmers are being forced to sign production contracts with input suppliers to obtain new technologies they need to stay competitive. Another critical factor determining who survives in these non- competitive markets is deep pockets and market share. Conglomerates with multiple holdings can cross-subsidize one of their operations with profits from another operation, making it harder for smaller, less diversified firms to compete. They can also drive local non-diversified firms out of business by excess production or processing of a commodity, driving price down below the cost of production. These cross-subsidies are increasingly taking place on a global scale. A firm like Cargill, which has operations in 70 countries, can absorb losses in one country so long as it can cross-subsidize with revenues from another country. Because they control supplies in more than one country, these multinationals can also drive prices down to the detriment of farmers in both countries. Even if concentration did produce economic efficiencies, such efficiencies wouldn't concern us if they weren't passed on to the consumer. But we've already seen that the agribusinesses' price windfalls are not being passed on to the consumer. That's because they are able to exploit their economic power to increase profit share at the expense of farmers. So it's simply not true that there are no viable alternatives to continued economic concentration. Concentration is not dictated by free markets, by technological progress, or by economic efficiency. It's occurring because of government-created monopolies, biased choices in technology policy, special relationships, and cross-subsidies. And it's occurring because our choices in farm and trade and antitrust policies. In the end, concentration is driven by policy choices that could be made differently. Consider all the policy choices that have brought American agriculture to where it is today. When we paved the way for family farming with the Homestead Act and the defeat of slavery, that was a policy choice. When we enacted parity legislation in the 1940s, leading to an increase in the number of farmers, expansion of soil and water conservation practices, and a decline in farm debt, that also was a policy choice. When we cut loan rates in the 1950s and 1960s to lower farm prices, that was a policy choice. When we interlinked domestic commodity markets with lower world prices through trade agreements, that was a policy choice. When we eliminated the safety net for farmers with the Freedom to Farm Act, that was a policy choice. When we invest public resources in technology that tilts the scales against family farmers, that is a policy choice. When we fail to fund enough economists at GIPSA or enough antitrust staff at Justice and the FTC, that is a policy choice. And when we encourage global concentration through our trade policies while allowing corporate agribusiness to destroy competitive markets here at home, that too is a policy choice. Now the policy choices before us are clear. We can take legislative action that will help preserve family-based agriculture. Or we can continue on our present course, which is leading unmistakably in the direction of contract farming, rural depopulation, and global oligopoly. In August, the Omaha World Herald carried a story about one economist's projections for the future of American agriculture. ``Farmers who stubbornly insist on being their own boss will end up in the economic scrap heap,'' he said. This economist described a trend toward ``polarization of farms by size, with the number of large farms growing at a rapid pace''; ``separation of land ownership from land production, with more and more people owning land as an investment and leasing property for production''; and contract farming, which will change the role of farmers from that of an independent producer to skilled tradesman.'' Can any Senator honestly tell me this is the vision he or she supports? Do we really want a world of contract farming, in which farm laborers are stuck with one-sided contracts and inadequate price information and struggle to get out from under mountains of debt? Do we really want a world in which our rural areas become depopulated because family farmers have to leave the land? Do we really want a world in which vertical integration and contract farming shift ever more bargaining power to agribusinesses? Do we really want a world in which management decisions are made by a small group of corporate executives, removed from the land thanks to new precision farming technologies? Do we really want a world in which titanic food chains face little pressure to pass on price savings to the consumer? Do we have any say in this matter? I think we do. We don't have to accept this vision of the future if we don't want to. We can propose a different one, and we can fight for it. These are all policy choices. These choices are made more difficult by the immense power of corporate agribusiness--not only economic power, but political power as well. As Lee Swenson of the NFU recently testified, The remaining firms are increasing market share and political power to the point of controlling the governments that once regulated the firms. Some of the biggest corporations have gotten tax breaks or other government incentives. . . . Corporate interests have also called on the government to weaken environmental standards and immigrant labor protections in order to allow them to reduce productions costs. The bigger these agribusinesses get, the more influence they have over our public policy choices. The bigger they get, the more money they have to spend on political campaigns. The bigger they get, the more lobbyists they can afford to amass on Capitol Hill. The bigger they get, the more likely they are to be named special U.S. trade representatives, like the CEO of Monsanto. The bigger they get, the more likely public officials will be to confuse their interests with the public interest, if they don't already do that. And the bigger they get, the more weight they will pull in the media. It's a vicious circle. These agribusiness conglomerates used their political clout to shape public policies that helped them grow so big in the first place. Now their overwhelming size makes it easier for them to dictate policies that will help get even bigger. This was just as much a problem at the turn of the century as it is now. American democracy suffered greatly as a result of concentration of economic power in the late 1800s. But the Populists and their successors showed us that there is a different path, that there are alternatives, and they proceeded to lay the groundwork for the Progressive Era. Even before the founding of the People's Party, populists and labor and progressives began working to rein in the concentration of economic power. With the help of some forward-looking Republicans, they fought for and passed the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act and the Packers and Stockyards Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act. They also reined in the trusts through regulation of banks and railroads. And they demanded more and better democracy through the direct election of senators. Judge Robert Bork notwithstanding, I don't believe the Sherman Act was motivated by concerns over economic efficiency and consumer welfare. In fact, during consideration of the Sherman Act, Congressman Mason directly responded to the efficiency arguments raised by John D. Rockefeller. If the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to the people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprises. As Richard Hofstadter has written, the Sherman Act was ``a ceremonial concession to an overwhelming public demand for some kind of reassuring action against the trusts.'' During debate on the Act, Senator John Sherman himself railed against the ``kingly prerogative'' of men with ``concentrated powers.'' He vowed that ``We will not long endure a king over production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessities of life.'' But the antitrust laws, in the words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, are now ``mere husks of what they were intended to be.'' In the last 20 years, the courts have been unduly influenced by the anti- antitrust views of Judge Bork and the Chicago School. Today tremendously unfair market power routinely goes unpunished, especially with regard to vertical integration. Courts have limited the effectiveness of the antitrust laws by narrowing their focus to questions of economic efficiency and consumer welfare. The focus on consumer welfare is an obstacle to antitrust enforcement in agriculture, even though farmers were an integral part of the original antitrust movement. Conventional antitrust analysis focuses on the ability of dominant firms to charge higher prices to consumers; price declines are generally not regarded as a problem. But farmers today are drawing attention to the ability of dominant firms to abuse their market power to pay lower prices to producers, not consumers. The Justice Department's recent approval of the Cargill-Continental merger raises troubling questions about the future of antitrust enforcement in agriculture. If DOJ can't stop the merger of Cargill and Continental, what merger will it ever stop? Will it ever be able to take any action at all to arrest the trend towards concentration in agriculture? The Packers and Stockyards Act is a similar story. Enacted in 1921 to combat the market abuse of the top five meat packers, it has extremely broad and far-reaching language. Under the Packers and Stockyard Act, it is unlawful for any packer to ``engage in or use any unfair, unjustly discriminatory, or deceptive practice or device.'' It is unlawful to ``make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage.'' However, some court decisions have limited its scope, and USDA is unwilling to test its regulatory authority in court. Meanwhile, concentration in the meat-packing industry today is higher than it was when the FTC issued its original report leading to enactment of the 1921 Act. Clearly, we cannot simply rely on the current antitrust statutes and antitrust authorities to address the rapid consolidation of the agricultural sector. We must change our antitrust laws. Whether or not our antitrust agencies have authority that they are unwilling to exercise, we need to force their hand. And we must develop a new farm policy. Realistically, however, we know that doing these things may take some time. We must act now. There is something we can do in the short term. I am offering legislation with Senator Dorgan that would impose a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions among agribusinesses that must already submit pre-merger filings under current law (annual net revenue or assets over $100 million for one party and $10 million for the other). This moratorium would remain in effect for 18 months, or until Congress enacts legislation to address the problem of concentration in agriculture, whichever comes first. Over the longer term, however, we need to focus on equalizing the bargaining power between farmers and the global agribusiness giants. A growing disparity of economic power is shifting a larger share of farm income to agribusiness. We need to reverse that trend and level the playing field. Unless we ensure that farmers and ranchers receive a fair share of the profit of the food system, little else we do to maintain family-size farms is likely to succeed. Of course, there's more than one way to attack the problem of unequal bargaining power. The antitrust statutes helped equalize bargaining power by increasing competition, thereby reducing the market power of monopolies. The formation of agricultural cooperatives under the Capper-Volstead Act helped equalize bargaining power from the opposite direction--by increasing the market power of farmers. Under either approach, farmers improve their bargaining position and are likely to obtain a greater share of farm income. Yet there are some inherent disparities in market power that can only be remedied through farm policy. Because there are so many farmers, no single farmer can influence price on his or her own. On their own, farmers cannot limit production waiting for prices to rise or until they can shift crops. Farmers are unable to reduce supply without assistance from the government, which is where farm policy can play a role. Farm policy can also remedy inherent disparities in market power by placing a floor on prices. Laws guaranteeing workers the right to bargain collectively and a minimum wage are based on the same idea. The minimum wage law recognizes that there is unequal bargaining power between employers and workers, and that wage negotiation would often lead to wages that are too low. The bargaining power between agribusiness conglomerates and farmers is similarly unequal, and it is resulting in farmer prices that are too low. Farmers today essentially need the equivalent of a minimum wage. Of course, bolstering the market power of family farmers is inimical to the economic interests of corporate agribusiness, and it will be fiercely resisted. But in the past we have managed to tame concentrations of economic and political power, and I refuse to believe we cannot do so again. For this reason, the examples of the Populist movement and the Progressive Era are enormously instructive and encouraging. Finally, I want to mention the fiery closing speech at the People's Party convention in 1892, which reads like it could have been written yesterday. It was delivered by a remarkable Minnesotan--an implacable foe of monopoly power named Ignatius Donnelly. Donnelly affirmed that ``the interests of rural and urban labor are the same,'' and he called for a return to America's egalitarian founding principles. ``We seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of the `plain people' with whom it originated,'' he said. We should do no less. If we want to sustain a vibrant rural economy and a thriving democracy, we need urgent reform of our farm and antitrust laws. We must act now. We can start by passing an 18-month moratorium on the largest agribusiness mergers. I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of our time for the minority.