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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, as the meatpacking industry became increasingly concentrated in the 1990s, fewer animals were sold through negotiated purchases--or, you could say, you could call that cash purchases or you could call it the spot market.

In the 1990s, we saw increased use of alternative marketing arrangements that were not publicly disclosed under voluntary reporting. Livestock producers knew that these arrangements were not allowing them to get a fair market price for their livestock going to slaughter so they called for livestock mandatory reporting, also known as LMR. This new law would apply to packers who purchase livestock, process them, and market the meat.

When the livestock mandatory reporting legislation was first considered in 1998, it unfortunately didn't get very far. I want to read for you an article from March of 1999 because it is going to have some relationship to a similar issue that we hope to get before Congress before the end of the year, and that is a bipartisan piece of legislation I am referring to.

I want to read an article from March 1999, from the Southern Livestock Review. That article is entitled ``How Campaign Money, Republican Lobbyists Killed Mandatory Price Reporting.'' I am going to read that article into the Record in its entirety, only I will not read names. I will refer to former Senators as Senator 1, 2, and 3, and I will refer to lobbyists' names as Lobbyist 1 and Lobbyist 2.

My point is to remind my fellow Senators today not to be blindsided again by the American Meat Institute, like happened in 1998 to kill legislation back then, because I don't want a similar thing to happen with what some of us Senators are proposing this year. This is important because Senator Fischer and I are soon to introduce legislation to update livestock price transparency.

Now, I will read. This is a long reading.

How Campaign Money, Republican Lobbyists Killed Mandatory Price Reporting:

In the heat of last October's upcoming election and Congress' hurry-get-out-of-town legislating, the draft of a massive $4 billion farm bailout bill--which included federal relief for cash-strapped farmers and mandatory public price reporting in livestock markets--was in place as congressmen and senators flew home for a weekend of campaigning.

When the lawmakers returned the following Monday, however, mandatory livestock price reporting was virtually gutted, butchered by well-connected Republican lobbyists and huge sums of political action campaign money from the meatpacker- backed American Meat Institute.

How this deboning occurred is an object lesson in how private money often thwarts public will and why solid, sensible farm policy often dies at the hands of craven politicians and legions of lobbyists.

In July 1998, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, put mandatory price reporting in livestock markets into what was then a modest $500 million farm drought relief bill. Daschle, responding to years of complaints from his state ranchers over meatpacker concentration, didn't ask for the moon. All he wanted was a one-year experimental program that required meatpackers to publicly disclose the prices they paid when buying livestock from producers.

But as the ag economy continued to skid in late summer, the bill's cost escalated and so did the warning over what the bill would include. Daschle's price reporting request also came under attack from the AMI, the meatpacker lobby in Washington. Packers viewed the idea as costly-- estimated by USDA at $60 million per--and unnecessary.

Yet as momentum picked up for an even bigger farm relief bill, mandatory price reporting opponents like AMI sensed Daschle's efforts would be adopted as the ``save-the-farm'' rhetoric built after Labor Day.

To shoot down Daschle's plan, AMI hastily bought some bazookas. In early September, AMI hired [Lobbyist No. 1] . . . a member of one of Washington's most powerful Republican lobbying firms.

For an extra pop, reported the October 25, 1998 Washington Post, AMI also hired two other Republican leaders-turned- lobbyists, [Lobbyist No. 2] and [Lobbyist No. 3]. . . .

Now plugged into the Republican power grid, AMI turned on the juice. During the 1998 election cycle, AMI doled out $198,473 in political action committee money raised from executives of member firms like Cargill's Excel, ConAgra's Monfort, Kraft's Oscar Myer, Premium Standard Farms, Farmland Industries, and Smithfield Foods. Most of the money went to Republican candidates.

In fact, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign watchdog group, $165,973 or 84% of AMI's 1997-98 PAC cash landed in Republican campaign coffers. House Republican candidates got $114,973 of the meatpacker lard; Senate Republicans got $51,000.

But as the crucial October legislative deadline approached, mandatory price reporting was still alive in the farm bailout bill's final draft. Then AMI lobbyists and money began to get traction.

The lobbyists, in particular [Lobbyist No. 1], a longtime pal of fellow Mississippians--and Republican Senators-- [Senator No. 1] and [Senator No. 2] got the price reporting legislation pulled from that ag bill. Senate Democrats and a few of their farm state Republican colleagues were furious.

Daschle struck back. With [Senator No. 2's] blessing, he folded mandatory price reporting into the even bigger $520 billion omnibus 1999 Budget Bill that was still hanging fire. Two days later, it too was gutted by Republicans into a meaningless ``confidential one-year government investigation, during which livestock prices would not be disclosed'' by the packers, according to the Washington Post.

Sources say [Lobbyist No. 1] buddy [Senator No. 1] wielded the knife. As chairman of the Senate Ag Appropriations Subcommittee, [Senator No. 1] refused to fund any new price reporting effort as part of the bailout bill, thus killing it there. Later, at the behest of [Lobbyist No. 1], [Lobbyist No. 2], and [Lobbyist No. 3], [Senator No. 1] neutered mandatory price reporting in the Budget Bill by keeping any information gained through it ``confidential.''

Now the National Pork Producers Council, a past opponent of mandatory price reporting, the American Farm Bureau, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman are calling for publicly disclosed, mandatory price reporting legislation from Congress.

An AMI spokesman said the group will fight the new effort, but didn't know if [Lobbyists 1, 2, or 3] would carry water for the packers in 1999. Yet, he adds, referring to [Lobbyist No. 1], ``He served our purposes well last year.''

No kidding. But the meatpackers paid assassins--[Lobbyist No. 1] and his Republican pals--stuck a knife in the back of every livestock producer in America last fall. And it's still there.

Now, that is the end of my reading of the March 1999 article by Alan Guebert in the Southern Livestock Review.

So you see, many of the same hurdles that we went through in `98 are the hurdles that we are facing now with making needed cattle market reforms.

The same high-powered and well-connected lobbyists who work for the Big Four meat processors are still the same high-powered and well- connected lobbyists who are lobbying against the market reforms of today. Those reforms are being proposed by a bipartisan group of Senators and will soon be introduced.

But I have got news for you. The special interests of the meat packers don't have a vote in the U.S. Senate.

Last week, Senators Fischer, Tester, Wyden, and I announced a framework to increase price discovery and transparency in the cattle market.

You will never guess who, once again, is fighting this commonsense legislation--the very same group that I referred to as AMI, the American Meat Institute, now called the North American Meat Institute; that same group that, in the 1990s--or--yeah, the 1990s--was against the livestock mandatory reporting legislation has come out against the independent cattle producers again today.

See, these powerful corporations are against any reform that would give independent producers more leverage in negotiating a fair price for their cattle.

In 1998, South Dakotan Tom Daschle led the charge against these big meat packers. And while the livestock mandatory reporting was stalled in 1998, in 1999, Senator Daschle was able to get that across the finish line. And it is still law, but it isn't a perfect piece of legislation, and our proposals ought to improve it dramatically.

Now we have Senators, farmers, consumers from all over the country who want to see reforms. Livestock farmers are losing money, consumers are paying record high prices for beef, and meat packers are making record profits.

Now, I am sharing this story today to show that even changes that we now view as common sense were once opposed by the meat industry. We still have time this year to make real market reforms that will help independent producers stay in the cattle business.

I urge my colleagues to support a piece of legislation that we have entitled Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act and support independent cattle producers.

I hope you will join Senator Fischer, this Senator, Senator Tester, and Senator Wyden and several other Senators in the last 24 hours that have joined this effort.

These reforms are long overdue, and we can't let these special interest groups, like the North American Meat Institute, stop this important legislation like I just described for you how they stopped it in 1998. And thank God Senator Daschle didn't give up, because the next year he eventually got it done.

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