Senate Action

Floor Speech

SENATE ACTION -- (Senate - December 14, 2007)

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today first to thank my staff for their wonderful work on the farm bill: Hilary Bolea, who is a very smart young woman, who has been working with us in Washington, DC, and then also Dave Frederickson, experienced--he was the former head of the National Farmers Union who came out of retirement to join my staff in Minnesota. They are quite a pair. My favorite thing this summer is when Dave Frederickson took Hilary Bolea to a tractor pull at the Minnesota Farmfest. So we have a great team, and I am proud of their work.

I am happy the farm bill passed today with its forward-looking provisions on cellulosic ethanol, the disaster relief, permanent disaster relief that we worked so hard to get, the strong safety net for our farmers. The reasons we had that safety net 75 years ago in the Depression with volatile prices, volatile weather, continue today.

As you know, I would have liked to have seen a little more reform in this bill. I would like to see some income eligibility limits as well as the subsidy limits set down in the Dorgan-Grassley bill. We are going to continue to push for that reform. We will work with Representative Peterson, who is from Minnesota, the head of the Ag Committee in the House, and our great leader, Senator Harkin, with our ranking member, Senator Chambliss, as the bill goes to conference committee.

I am hopeful there will be some discussion with the White House about the reform in the bill. We have a very good start here and we need to continue that discussion in the months to come.

The other thing, I wish to commend the Senate for passing the Energy bill yesterday. I came out of the Commerce Committee. We worked on that gas mileage standard. We are now seeing a 10-mile-per-gallon increase, not only good for the environment but also, most importantly, good for the American consumer. They can save money by having less cost for gas. This energy bill is just the beginning of us starting to focus not on spending all our money on the oil cartels in the Middle East but instead focusing on the farmers and workers of the Midwest and our own energy independence.

Finally, on the FHA reauthorization and the work being done on the subprime issue, I had a roundtable with a number of people involved in this back in Minnesota. Minnesota is fourth in the country for subprime mortgage foreclosures. The chickens are coming home to roost in terms of predatory lending. We finally have started to work on the issue in Washington, and we see the problems it is causing not only for individual homebuyers but for entire neighborhoods and communities.

All in all, I believe we got some things done at the end of the week.

The one last thing I commend the Senate for is the work on the pool safety bill. I have spoken on the floor a few times about something of maybe little note when you look at the larger scheme, but a very important note to one family, and that is the Taylor family of Edina, MN. Their girl Abby was severely injured in a wading pool this summer. She may never eat again. She is sick but she is so strong in spirit. Her family called me literally every 2 weeks to check on the progress of this bill. Because of Abby, we were able to strengthen the bill. It was named after former Secretary of State Jim Baker's granddaughter when she was so tragically killed in a similar accident. This puts in a standard, a retroactive standard for public pools which includes apartments, any pools used by the public. It includes stronger drain covers, a vacuum suction system. It is a very good bill. The House bill is similar. I have every intention to get this thing done. I thank Senator Pryor, Senator Stevens, and others for their work to get this done on a bipartisan basis in the Senate. One of the proudest moments my year here was when I was able to call Scott Taylor last night at about 9 p.m. from the Senate floor and tell him that that bill had passed and to know we were going to go home to Minnesota and have a little Christmas present for that family, something we worked so hard on to make sure this wouldn't happen to another child.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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