Agriculture

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, we are here today to commend our Republican leadership for forging a bipartisan compromise on a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown.

In particular, I am so pleased that we reached an agreement that included full reimbursement to the Commodity Credit Corporation, which we have all been talking about--not only agreement, but to take away the potential of unnecessary delays in farm and conservation payments, which are so important to our farmers.

For decades, the CCC has been routinely reimbursed without fanfare, but, unfortunately, not so this year. Our farmers and ranchers have faced more than enough challenges this year--extreme weather events, low commodity prices, market volatility, a global pandemic, and the list just goes on and on and on. They don't need Washington to make things even more difficult

With passage of this bill, with the full CCC reimbursement, farm and conservation program payments will go out as planned and will offer farmers and ranchers a little more certainty and a little bit more predictability to continue growing the food and fiber for this Nation-- not only for this Nation but for the world.

These important programs--like Ag Risk Coverage, Price Loss Coverage, Market Assistance Loans, the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, and others--were authorized in the 2018 farm bill that was supported with an overwhelmingly bipartisan record number of votes in the Senate.

So I want to really just thank all of those involved in this effort. They worked so, so very hard. A special thanks to Senator McConnell and his staff and Chairman Roberts, whom we have with us now, who is certainly the voice of ag in the Senate and in Congress. We are going to miss him greatly, as he decides to step aside. And also to Senator Hoeven and the great work that he did through the ag appropriations part of this.

Then, as Senator Roberts mentioned, there are the staffs that worked so, so very hard, and also the members of the Ag Committee who stepped up and really shouldered the burden and just did a tremendous job in really explaining to Congress and explaining to the public how important this issue was and that we simply could not go forward without getting it included.

Then we are here, and we fight. We are kind of the tip of the stick and the spear in the ag community and worked really hard in that regard. We simply couldn't get it done without the agriculture groups that worked so, so very hard, again, in educating the farmers. They understand how important this is, but, again, mobilizing them, mobilizing the public so that we could have the great result that we did.

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