Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of the Treasury Relating to ``Returns By Exempt Organizations and Returns By Certain Nonexempt Organizations''--motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oklahoma. H.R. 2

Mr. President, I want to thank Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Roberts and Ranking Member Stabenow for their hard work in putting together the 2018 farm bill. It was a long and difficult process, and they negotiated in good faith.

I also want to thank my friend and colleague from Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst, for her dedication to reforming the Conservation Reform Program. In the Midwest, we refer to that as the CRP. The program's intent is to reduce land erosion, improve water quality, and help wildlife populations. Over the years, it has strayed from its intended focus.

Some landowners have been receiving more than $300 per acre to enroll their entire farms in the CRP. That puts young and beginning farmers at a competitive disadvantage. In fact, even well-established farmers have had rented land taken away from them because it was enrolled in the CRP at lucrative rates paid by the government that the individual farmer could not compete with.

Farmers can't and shouldn't have to compete with the government, especially with the current debt our country has. Senator Ernst has been an advocate for these reforms, and these reforms have been accomplished as a result of her efforts.

Unfortunately, the 2018 farm bill did not include another critical reform that would help young and beginning farmers, that is my payment limitations amendment. This is a process I have been trying to get accomplished and have been unsuccessful through at least this farm bill and two previous farm bills.

Each time I have been successful in getting these reforms throughout the U.S. Senate--in the 2014 farm bill, I was able to get them through both the House and Senate in the same form--but do you know what? In the dark rooms of conference committee meetings and phone calls, people who don't like to save the taxpayers money and who don't want to help young and beginning farmers and medium-sized and smaller farmers and who worry more about the wealthy farmers have been able to undercut the effort, even when a majority of both bodies has supported it.

I didn't give up as a result of the 2014 bill and the disappointment there. I got through the U.S. Senate those hard caps on what any one farmer can get and to make sure the people who benefited from it were, in fact, farmers, not nonfarmers who maybe had a distant relationship from some farming operation, maybe even being on Wall Street.

Once again, I was undercut in this effort to save the taxpayers money and to concentrate our farm bill on medium- and small-sized farmers who need the help, when things have happened naturally or politically or internationally that are beyond their control that drive down prices or acts of God such as a drought. It is the small- or medium-sized farmers who need the help from the government, not these big farmers and corporate farmers whom we are going to end up helping, the way this bill is written.

To say the least, I am disappointed that the bill makes more subsidies available to the wealthiest farmers and many nonfarmers. I would say that is a severe understatement. I am more than just a little disappointed, especially when the impact of large farmers being allowed to manipulate the system is that young and beginning farmers face even larger hurdles.

So far, the bill has not won much praise outside of the Washington lobby groups whose members will receive more taxpayer subsidies from a few select changes.

At its core, farm policy should be a limited safety net to help farmers weather the storm of natural disasters, unpredictable commodity markets, and other unforeseen challenges. This bill goes well beyond that limited safety net.

Today we have a farm bill that is intentionally written--I want to emphasize ``intentionally written''--to help the largest farmers receive unlimited subsidies from the Federal Government. There is no other way to characterize what the conference committee has done in this area.

In the last farm bill, both bodies of Congress approved a commonsense amendment I offered that would have limited the abuses related to title I subsidies. This time the House would not even have that debate--no debate on my reforms. The Senate did, however, include it in their bill.

However, the 2014 conference committee put in a loophole that exempted family farms, which account for approximately 95 percent of farms, from the new rules. This bill makes their original loophole even larger. So as bad as the 2014 farm bill was, this new 5-year farm bill widens that loophole almost beyond explaining.

The new farm bill will allow nieces and nephews to qualify as part of a family farm without any new requirements that they actually have to work. Despite what some of my colleagues may say, this is not about helping nieces and nephews get into farming. Why? Because every person who really farms already qualifies for title I payments by themselves without this new gimmick. So this new gimmick is just to award this big taxpayer money to people who aren't actually working the farm.

Allowing nieces and nephews to qualify as part of a large farm entity merely allows larger farmers to get more subsidies. They just need to hire the right lawyer to structure the farming operation in a certain way, and they can then receive unlimited taxpayer subsidies.

For years I have been using this figure about the top 10 percent of the farmers receiving more than 70 percent of the subsidies from the government. That is only one of the many reasons it is so hard for young and beginning farmers to get started.

I know it is hard to believe, but I have never heard a single young or beginning farmer tell me that the way to help the young and beginning farmer is to give more money out of the U.S. Treasury to the largest farmers.

Many farmers are hurting from the downturn in commodity prices. That has been a downturn over the last three or four years. Corn and soybeans have had significant price declines in those years. If only all crops were as lucky as cotton, with its high prices ensured by the Federal Government over the last year, then all people would be, what we say, ``living in the clover.''

However, market corrections do not justify Congress expanding subsidy loopholes that only benefit the wealthy--especially at a time when our long-term fiscal situation is as bad as it has ever been.

The last time we passed a farm bill, our national debt was $17 trillion. Today it stands at $21.8 trillion, and we all know that it is growing. So whether it is talking about saving the taxpayers' money or whether it is talking about targeting the farm program to small and medium-sized farmers as opposed to the wealthy, or whether it is talking about getting young people into farming, Congress needs to get serious about spending.

This bill represents an open-ended spigot of taxpayer subsidies in the title I programs of the bill. Because of this, when we cast our vote about 1 hour ago, I voted against this farm bill, which, otherwise, is a pretty basic program. We could have done a lot more to save the taxpayers money, and we didn't.

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