Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007

Floor Speech

FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - December 14, 2007)

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I support the 2007 farm bill. I would like to begin by thanking the chairman, Tom Harkin, for his hard work and determination on this bill. I also would like to thank Senator Saxby Chambliss for his efforts on this bill. Lastly, I would like to recognize Senators Baucus and Grassley for putting together a tax package to provide funding for agricultural disasters and other functions in the bill.

Farm bills are not easy to move through the legislative process. A good farm bill must balance a host of competing funding priorities and the policies and priorities of shifting alliances of regional interests. This farm bill was further complicated by a shrinking baseline due to projected increases in commodity prices and the pay-go rules put into place at the beginning of the 110th Congress. The chairman had a smaller pool of dollars for this bill compared to the 2002 farm bill.

Through many hours of hard work, traveling the country, holding hearings, and writing the bill, a solid compromise package emerged. This is by and large a good bill, but it could be better.

I am sure the chairman wishes he could have done more on conservation, energy, nutrition, and reform than was possible given the funding constraints and the priorities of the committee. However, Chairman Harkin and the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee should be proud of what is in this package.

A couple of notable achievements were made. First and foremost, I thank Chairman Harkin and the members of the committee for including an optional Average Crop Revenue Program in the bill. The ACR is a State-level revenue countercyclical program that provides income support when farmer revenue dips below expected revenue.

This is a market-oriented reform that targets taxpayer support to producers in need. Rather than being based on target prices alone like the current programs, this program protects producers against both yield and price declines, which combine to form a more accurate picture of a producer's viability. It is a better safety net for farmers. Because it is based on market prices rather than politically determined target prices, and is targeted to those who suffer losses, it is more defensible to taxpayers.

The program has broad bipartisan support. The administration supports a revenue countercyclical program and Senators Chambliss, Conrad, Thune, and others spoke in favor of the concept in the Senate Agriculture Committee. The program also generates significant savings that Chairman Harkin was able to use to improve commodity programs and provide resources to conservation, nutrition, and energy programs.

This is a proposal that closely resembles a bill Senator Brown and I offered this summer. Senators Brown and Harkin were leaders in developing this model and moving it through the committee process.

Part of the ACR savings are used for improving our nutrition programs. The farm bill's nutrition programs are critical for helping alleviate hunger. In 2005, 35 million people lived in food-insecure households, including 12.4 million children. Of these individuals, 7.6 million adults and 3.2 million children lived in households with very low food security.

I thank the chairman for making some changes to the Food Stamp Program and other nutrition programs that will allow more Americans to participate in these programs. For example, the bill modifies eligibility criteria and allocations for nutrition that have not been updated in 30 years. For example, under current law food stamp beneficiaries can own no more than $2,000, a number that has gone unchanged since 1977. It is a disincentive for people to save and unnecessarily makes many who should participate ineligible. This bill raises the asset level to $3,500, allowing 23,000 newly eligible individuals to participate in the Food Stamp Program by 2012 and 115,000 by 2017.

In addition, the bill increases the minimum food stamp benefit from $10 per month to $18 per month by 2012. Like the asset test, the minimum benefit has not kept pace with inflation. It has not been adjusted for inflation in almost 30 years, meaning that households that receive it can purchase only about one-third as much food as they could have in 1979.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, approximately 615,000 households, or 738,000 people, will receive higher benefits under this provision, nearly most of them seniors or people with disabilities.

Lastly, the bill provides $250 million per year for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, TEFAP, the program used by 25 million people each year to avoid going hungry. This funding will allow food pantries and soup kitchens to provide food to individuals who don't qualify for food stamps or can't stretch their benefits to avoid going to bed hungry.

The most dynamic part of agriculture is the development of a robust biofuels market and the expansion of renewable forms of energy. Our farms and small towns have the potential to help free America from our dependence on imported oil. This bill builds on that trend and makes important investments in technologies that will strengthen our ability to produce renewable energy. Overall, the bill invests $1.3 billion over the baseline, which is a step forward but short of the $2.4 billion invested by the House.

It moves us toward producing fuels from cellulosic biomass by investing in programs to help farmers transition to biomass crop production, harvesting, and storage. It also provides $300 million in grants and loan guarantees for the development of biorefineries and biomass conversion facilities.

The energy title contains $245 million for feedstock costs for cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel and adds $230 million for section 9006 grants and loan guarantees for solar, wind, and methane digesters. Lastly, the bill commissions a study on ethanol pipelines and adds $25 million for E-85 infrastructure.

The bill makes major investments in conservation. The bill provides about $4 billion over baseline for important conservation programs that protect wildlife and water quality and prevent soil erosion. Included in this funding is $1.2 billion for the Conservation Security Program and the reauthorization of the Wetlands Reserve Program. The bill also extends the Grasslands Reserve Program and reauthorizes the important conservation and wildlife programs.

In other titles, I was glad to see the bill make modest gains in trade promotion. The bill also increases the authorization for the McGovern-Dole program, although it does not provide mandatory funding for the program.

On food safety, the bill contains a Food Safety Commission that I helped author with Chairman Harkin and Senator Chambliss.

The bill also contains a rural broadband mapping and access bill based on the success of Connect Kentucky. It would expand this type of program to other States.

This bill could be better in a number of different areas. It provides about $1 billion less in energy funding than the House bill. I think that could be improved given the importance of this area.

It also does not go far enough in terms of targeting payments and income support to producers in need of assistance. The investigative reports of the past several years have shown us that millionaires, deceased landowners, and others who shouldn't qualify for Government support receive payments year in and year out.

Because of rules governing loan deficiency payments, producers can evade payment limits. Two-thirds of payments go to about 10 percent of producers. Taxpayers provide $5.2 billion in the form of direct payments to farmers every year regardless of whether a producer has a good year or a bad year.

Not only is this indefensible in a time of budget deficits and high commodity prices, it makes our commodity support programs less sustainable for producers that really require some assistance. Now, the compromise worked out by Senators Lincoln, Conrad, and Chambliss does some good things--it eliminates the three-entity rule and anonymous certificates, which are both very real improvements in the program. Unfortunately, this bill does not go far enough.

While it does lower the means test for eligibility for payments from the current level of $2.5 million to $750,000, many very wealthy producers will be able to circumvent this soft cap. I am disappointed that amendments offered by my colleagues, Senators Dorgan, Brown, and Klobuchar, that would have tightened payment eligibility failed to pass on the floor. I also would have hoped we could have improved the ACR Program to provide producers with an even better option, and hope my colleagues will work to improve it in conference.

Overall, though, this is a very good bill. I again thank the chairman and ranking member for their hard work.

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