Expressing Sense of House Relating to Crop Insurance

Floor Speech

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Mr. LUCAS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

First, I would note, again, to my colleagues that this is one of the final stages of this long, challenging process of putting a comprehensive farm bill together.

With the conclusion of this debate on this sense of the Congress resolution and the votes that I suspect will come sometime later today or tomorrow, we will begin then with the appointment of conferees, the formal process of working out the differences between House and Senate bills. That is no small accomplishment, considering how many years Ranking Member Peterson and I and the members of the House Agriculture Committee have put into this effort. As a matter of fact, when we started the process of gathering information and putting the hearing record together, I was the ranking member, and Mr. Peterson was the chairman. So this has been a long, long process.

Now, I must say that I am obligated to rise in opposition to the resolution. I think the world of the author of this amendment, and in his role as chairman of the House Budget Committee, not only is he well-intentioned in this amendment and his many other efforts, but let's be honest, our friend has a tremendous amount of work on his plate, addressing everything from the issues about how we work our way out of this debt ceiling matter, how we address funding the Federal Government, how we finally put a budget resolution together. I know he is a busy, busy man; but I must say the committee focused very hard for literally years on all of these issues.

I won't pretend that with all of the things going on right now, not that many weeks after some very intense debate on the floor of this House, the goodly number of our Members are not focused on particular nuances of the farm bill, but on everything else going on.

But I would remind my good friends, the perspective of the House Ag Committee and the perspective of the majority--yes, maybe I have had too much fun with farm bills in recent years--of this process has led us to believe that it was important that we encourage participation in crop insurance. Crop insurance is like other insurance. It is about creating a pool of risk and spreading it out as far as you possibly can, having as many participants as you possibly can to share adversity, to contribute more premiums into that pool so that when you have that inevitable loss somewhere, you are better able to address it. And that is the perspective the committee took and I believe the House, as a whole, took. Get as many people involved in utilizing and expanding the insurance pool as is possible.

Now, this sense of the Congress language is, in many ways, similar to the Senate language and would restrict the number of people based on AGI that would be able to participate, taking people out of the pool, shrinking the pool. These are, in all fairness, some of the most efficient farmers.

I will just simply ask my colleagues, remember the work of the committee and the work of this body. Help us keep this program as viable as possible.

Help us make sure that all farmers have the tools to mitigate their risk.

Now, there is one other perspective here, and we have talked about this many times, and it is the perspective of, what is the farm bill about? Is it about raising food and fiber? Is it about meeting the nutritional needs of our citizens in this country and having our surplus available to consumers around the rest of the world?

Or is it about deciding who a farmer should be, and using policy decisions within the farm bill to pick people who we want to farm, and to deny resources to people we don't happen to like who want to farm also?

I reject that also. Farm bills are about farming, raising food and fiber, meeting the needs.

I would ask again, very respectfully, of my colleagues, honor the decisions of the full House not all that long ago. Reject this sense of the House resolution.

Remember that you are helping us build on something that is kind of amazing in this session of Congress, a bill that came out of committee with $40 billion in mandatory spending reform, with a bipartisan vote, a bill that left the United States House with a total of $60 billion in mandatory spending reforms.

I can think of no other committee in this session of Congress that can lay claim to that--$60 billion in mandatory reform.

Let us go to conference. Let us have as much flexibility as possible. Let us finish our work. Let us finish our good work, and we will bring a product back to you from conference that you can judge on its merits.

With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This debate is coming to a conclusion. I appreciate that greatly. The civil tone, the nature of the discussion, is something that we should do more of in this body; but I would note a couple of quick thoughts to my colleagues.

There have been many references made to the historic crop insurance payments made in the 2012 crop year. One of those amazing circumstances was huge amounts of the Midwest, some of the most productive corn land in America, simply didn't produce a crop--or not much of a crop. That is no fault of the farmer involved. That is Mother Nature's decision not to provide the right amount of moisture or, in other places, too much moisture.

But, you see, that is what crop insurance is all about. When I first came here, we had a system that worked around--not crop insurance, which didn't work very well and wasn't subscribed to by a lot of people. We had a system of ad hoc disasters. If you had a problem here or a problem there, then you would have a special appropriations bill to fund that disaster. Those special bills tended to grow and expand; and over time, they became a huge drain on the Treasury.

That is why, starting aggressively in the '96 farm bill--pushed even harder by then-Chairman PETERSON in the 2008 farm bill--the focus became: no more ad hoc disasters bills. Have a crop insurance program that works. Make it clear to producers that, if you have a problem, you have to have insurance, that you have to participate, that you have to pay the premiums.

Now, over the course of approximately the last decade, setting the 2012 year aside, this has become an amazingly orderly system. Many Members in this room don't remember ad hoc agricultural disaster bills because this has worked that well. I would challenge you in most--in more than in the majority of the years--that the resources coming into the program have been greater than the payments going out, but that is the way insurance is supposed to work--you pay in in good years, and you hope you never use the product; but in bad years, the assistance is there. Call it crop insurance. Call it life insurance. Call it fire insurance on your house. It is the principle behind the concept.

Now, the specific language we address here.

There has been much discussion about the draft that the United States Senate has adopted in its farm bill. It is the same 750 number, and he does include a study; but one of the main differences between what we are addressing today and what the Senate has in its language in going to conference is that the study, in effect, requires the USDA look at the effect of this limitation on the participation in the program and determine if that affects the viability of the program. Does it change the dynamics? Does it suddenly become a greater expense as you shrink the pool? It gives the Secretary the authority, if that study determines that this will be negative to crop insurance, to suspend the provision. That is not in this sense of Congress. It says, ``You shall.'' ``You will.''

One other passing thought: there has been a lot of discussion about reducing the numbers, the percentages, from 65 to 50. I will just simply note to you that in many cases that, in effect, is not just a 15 percent move; that is a 40 percent move. Think about that. If you are a farmer--who is a businessperson--assessing the cost of your inputs and trying to match that up with a potential return on your outputs, you are going to make those hard business decisions.

Again, I think the world of my colleague, the chairman of the Budget Committee. I know he has a lot of things on his plate, and I know he has had a great many challenges in his tenure as chairman of the House Budget Committee; but I will tell you that I think the Ag Committee has worked very diligently to craft language that we are now about to send to conference in order to work out the ultimate bill that reflects a lot of open process--in committee, on the floor, in a lot of input with motions to instruct today, and in another sense of the House resolution. We have acknowledged and responded to that input.

You have battled as Members of this body--and debated and discussed and voted--on all of these issues before. I would just ask my colleagues to remember what this body decided not all that long ago and that, also, as we go to conference with the Senate, it is going to be a very difficult thing to protect our $60 billion in mandatory spending reform that you have directed us to do. Give the committee, give me, give the ranking member as many tools and as much flexibility as you can so that we may prevail from the House's point of view in accomplishing common policy with the Senate that meets not only the goals of this Chamber, but the needs of this country.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I respectfully ask for a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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