Cybersecurity Act of 2012--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am here tonight on a different topic than the Senator from New Hampshire, but I wish to congratulate her on her fine work here. I know she doesn't need or wouldn't want me to say that, but the people of New Hampshire are so lucky to be represented by her. And this is exactly why--a reminder that our Olympic athletes are about to start, I hope, winning gold medals. I suspect they will win the most in this summer's Olympics. We are looking forward to that.

The Senator mentioned marathons, which brought to mind what I want to talk about tonight, which is the farm bill--an elegant segue from one marathon to another. I want to talk about it in the context of the severe drought that is facing Colorado and all of rural America, and I want to acknowledge the administration's ongoing efforts to provide Coloradans with disaster relief during this difficult summer of fires and drought.

We need to pass a 5-year farm bill as quickly as possible to address the challenges we are seeing in farm country. We have done the work to get an agreement on the Senate bill. In fact, we passed the 5-year farm bill in this Senate. It was a strong, bipartisan bill. I would like to thank the Senator from Michigan, Debbie Stabenow, and the ranking member of the committee for their incredible leadership in working together, both side of the aisle, never in a partisan way, to produce among other things the only bipartisan deficit reduction that any committee, House or Senate, has produced in this Congress--$24 billion of deficit reduction that has been agreed to by Republicans and Democrats. It ends direct payments to producers, which is one of the most substantial reforms we have seen in agriculture policy in a long time, and it strengthens the conservation title of the farm bill, which is very important to my State and to the West.

Colorado has a $40 billion agriculture sector that extends to all corners of our State. Farming and ranching are two things we do extremely well. The Senator from Iowa is here tonight, and his farmers do it extremely well in Iowa as well.

Producers in Colorado and nationwide are experiencing the worst drought in 50 years.

While Colorado is certainly no stranger to water challenges, this year's growing season has been particularly tough--to put it mildly.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, nearly our entire State is designated as an extreme drought area. This designation means we are experiencing major damage to crops and pastureland, as well as widespread water shortages. While this designation tells us a lot, we only need to ask the farmers and ranchers about how the dry conditions are threatening their operations.

I met recently with a group of corn growers from eastern Colorado. Take a look at what these farmers are up against. This is Steve Scott's cornfield 18 miles southeast of Burlington, CO, a town of 4,200 people near the Kansas border. This crop--and many others in the region--has withered under long stretches of high temperatures with little or no precipitation to help.

The Department of Agriculture reports that 50 percent of Colorado's corn production is in either poor or very poor condition. The drought has also taken a significant toll on our cattle producers. Colorado is one of America's top beef producers. Right now 75 percent of pastureland in Colorado, approximately 900,000 acres--and I am not sure how that measures up to the Presiding Officer's State, but it is pretty close to that size--is rated as either poor or very poor in condition. Dry pasture and feed shortages have led ranchers to liquidate their herds early, well before they have realized their full size and value.

The Greeley, CO, auction producers' barn is seeing double the sales activity right now as compared to the same time last year because ranchers are selling their cattle below full weight and maturity. They are losing anywhere from $200 to $400 a head.

Next week Carl Hansen of Livermore, CO, is selling 160 of his steers and 90 heifers. On average, each animal will be sold 150 pounds underweight due to the drought conditions. If beef is selling at $1.50 a pound, that is $56,000--actually a little more than that--of lost revenue for Carl Hansen and his family.

The consequences of this drought extend well beyond farm country. The damage to our farms and ranches affect other sectors of the economy--from transportation to energy, from banking to retail. We all know there is nothing Congress can do to stop the drought or prevent the next one from coming, but what we can do is give our farmers and ranchers the tools they need to manage this drought and plan for the future by passing a 5-year farm bill.

We hear a lot about uncertainty in these two Chambers. I can't imagine a set of circumstances creating more uncertainty in a difficult situation than that.

Now we hear that the House leadership is planning a 1-year punt on this whole conversation, one more expression that Washington, DC, has become the land of flickering lights, providing very little opportunity for people to be able to plan and have predictability.

What is wrong with the Senate-passed bipartisan farm bill that had the support of 64 Senators? Sixty-four Senators, Democrats and Republicans. Some people voted against it because they didn't think it was adequate to their region, but this was not a partisan vote. Neither the majority nor the minority vote was a partisan vote. This was the Senate operating as the Senate is meant to operate.

A 5-year bill provides our agriculture community with much needed certainty and predictability, but now it is being held up in the House by politics. Let's be clear: No one is pretending that the farm bill can correct bad weather. Our producers are not waiting on the farm bill to do what they do best. Colorado will continue innovating and increasing productivity, but the last thing on Earth they need is to have Washington's unfinished business hanging around their necks.

A 5-year farm bill will provide producers with a set of tools for managing through this drought and planning for the future. The 1-year bill being discussed over in the House by the leadership doesn't recognize--or is unwilling to recognize--the agriculture community's need to do long-term planning.

Among many other important provisions, the Senate farm bill contains revamped risk management programs like crop insurance, which is what I heard was needed by our farmers, and improvements farmers requested to help manage a severe drought exactly like the one we are going through right now. This is the point of that provision. A 1-year bill doesn't have any of those provisions.

Corn farmers on Colorado's eastern plains could lose 40 percent or more of their revenue this season. We need these reforms and the predictability of the Senate bill. Our bill also contains permanent disaster programs that provide responsible assistance to producers in need. Some of these programs, such as the livestock disaster program, expired in September 2011, almost a year ago. If Congress takes the easy way out and does a 1-year extension, our livestock producers will get no relief--none. This means no disaster assistance for ranchers whose pasture is too dry to feed their cattle.

Who is going to explain to the people selling at the Greeley auction barn why this is not a priority for our Congress in the middle of the worst drought in decades?

The House Agriculture Committee passed a 5-year farm bill with a strong bipartisan 35-to-11 vote. Again, this is not the partisan dysfunctionality we talked about for so many months on this floor. We have two bipartisan bills: One was passed out of committee on the House side with broad bipartisan support, and one was passed on the Senate floor with broad bipartisan support. It is not surprising that I am not the only person who is calling for a long-term extension--a 5-year extension. There are 79 House Members, including 41 Republicans, who wrote to the Speaker last week asking him to bring the long-term farm bill to the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter signed by 79 House Members be printed in the Record.

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Mr. BENNET. To quote Mr. Rogers:

Never before in modern times has a farm bill reported from the House Agriculture Committee been so blocked.

Never before in modern times. I suspect it is true in ancient times as well, but it has certainly been true in modern times. Rogers tells us that he ``looked back at 50 years of farm bills and found nothing like this.'' He continues:

Farmers live by nature's calendar, not continuing resolutions.

I could never have said it so eloquently myself. He also said:

And by failing to act, Congress can seem even more detached from the real lives of everyday people.

I would not have thought it was possible that this place could seem more detached from the everyday lives of the American people than it already appears to be. We found a way of doing that, and that is by failing to pass this bipartisan farm bill through the Congress in a timely way that is essential for people who are suffering through this kind of drought.

I think Mr. Rogers' observation is exactly right, and I have been on this floor many times before saying the people at home in Colorado--Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--don't identify with the cartoon of a conversation that we are having in Washington, DC, right now. I can't think of a clearer example than the failure to act on this bipartisan piece of legislation. This is legislation that would immediately help people all across our country, all across America, who are struggling today.

Mr. President, think for just a moment about our farmers in Colorado and rural communities just like our communities all across this wonderful country. Our farmers and ranchers are experiencing the worst drought in over half a century. Who is going to look in the eyes of our farmers in Middle America and tell them our dysfunctional politics will prevent this bill from moving forward?

Who is going to tell Steve Scott and Carl Hansen that this bill isn't going to be a priority in the Congress, that we are just going to take our recess and go home for a month not having passed this bipartisan piece of legislation, the only manifestation and example of bipartisan deficit reduction in either the House or the Senate in this entire Congress?

I implore the House to figure out how to come to its senses and pass a 5-year bill along the lines of the bill that was passed out of their committee, and then together we can have a conference and decide how we are going to move this bill forward on behalf of farmers and ranchers all across my State and the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

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