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Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act

Floor Speech

By: Mike Lee
By: Mike Lee
Date: June 20, 2012
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Agriculture and Food Government Budget and Spending

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I propose amendment No. 2314 to repeal the Conservation Reserve Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program. Here we have another instance of the Federal Government paying people not to use their land. In this circumstance, they are being paid not to grow crops on their land, not to use agricultural land.

We have an almost $16 trillion debt. CBO says this amendment would save over $15 billion in mandatory spending over 10 years. Not doing something is something that should be free. Only the Federal Government would try to defend the practice of spending billions and billions of dollars--

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Mr. LEE. Only the Federal Government would try to defend the barbaric, outmoded practice of paying people billions of dollars not to use their land. That is what these programs do. We need to get rid of them. That is why I propose this amendment. I invite my colleagues to join me in supporting it.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I introduce this motion to recommit to move us back to 2008 levels. We cannot continue to kick this can down the road in perpetuity. Our spending levels threaten to impair our ability to fund everything from defense to entitlements and everything that falls in between. This is a good start, and this is something that would cut the 10-year cost of this bill by $254 billion. We need to do it. We need to send it back to the committee, where the committee will have discretion on exactly how to accomplish that.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, in my approximately 20 seconds remaining, let me say that if we want to continue the same budgeting process that has put us nearly $16 trillion in debt, then we should proceed to vote against this. If, on the other hand, we want to turn this around and maintain our ability to fund essential government programs, we need to pass this.

I urge my colleagues to support the motion to recommit, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

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