Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I regret that we have heard an objection to pulling up this amendment. Many may not understand that to pull up an amendment and to have it considered in the Senate takes unanimous consent. All 100 have to agree.

My colleague has objected, making it impossible to consider an amendment that should be debated here on the floor of the Senate because this amendment is about good policy and good process.

Not so long ago, in the continuing resolution, a provision was slipped in by the House of Representatives. Because this was a must-pass bill under tight time constraints, it also slipped through the Senate with no debate. And what did this legislation do, the Monsanto protection act? This legislation does something that I think most would find astounding. It allows the unrestricted sale and planting of new variants of genetically modified seeds that a court has ruled have not been properly examined for their effect on other farmers, the environment, and human health.

Obviously, this raises a lot of concerns about the impact on farmers and the impact on human health, but there is even more. The fact that the act instructs the seed producers to ignore a ruling of the court is equally troubling. It raises profound questions about the constitutional separation of powers and the ability of our courts to hold agencies accountable to the law and their responsibilities.

I can tell my colleagues that this process and this policy has provoked outrage across the country. When I held townhalls in Oregon after this happened, at every townhall it was raised by farmers concerned that this would endanger the crops they were growing and hoped to export overseas. I have received over 2,200 letters on this topic.

I am very hopeful that when we come back next week, we can have a full debate on this amendment, that it won't be objected to, and that certainly there will be no opportunity of any kind for this policy to be extended because it hurts a process of holding our departments accountable for enforcing the law, and it provides a policy of overriding the court order designed to protect other farmers, to protect the environment, and to protect human health, and that is absolutely unacceptable.

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