Agricultural Act of 2014 -- Conference Report

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, before I address the farm bill, I would like to make two other points. The first is to commend the Presiding Officer. Yesterday he gave his first speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. About 20 of us were here and listened carefully. I am glad I did. It was time well spent. It was a speech which the Presiding Officer clearly not only worked on but believes in, and it showed. He addressed the plight of working Americans, and particularly those who have lost their jobs, and the responsibility of this Congress and this Nation to stand by these families while they are in transition looking for new opportunities.

I sat here and listened and watched as the Presiding Officer spoke to this subject, addressing specific people he has met in his State who told him their stories. I thought to myself: I have met quite a few in Illinois in like circumstances. I wish every Member of the Senate would do what the Presiding Officer has done--visit the towns, the restaurants, the veterans centers, and other places where unemployed people gather and listen to them.

The point the Presiding Officer made so convincingly was those who dismiss the unemployed as just lazy people have never met them. They are not lazy. They are workers who want to work again. What they are asking for is a helping hand, and the Presiding Officer made that point so eloquently yesterday.

What was particularly good for me, having served in the Senate for a number of years, was to hear a new Member of the Senate, in his first speech, really reach back to the values that inspired many of us to run for this position. It is easy to become jaded after you have been here for a while and been engaged in the petty political fights that take place here with some frequency. It is easy to forget why you asked your family to stand behind you when you ran, why you sacrificed to try to come to this place, and why each of us--some 1,200 or so who have had this distinct honor to serve in the Senate--should not miss the opportunity to bring our values and passion to the floor every single day.

So I thank the Senator from New Jersey, our Presiding Officer, for an extraordinary maiden speech, first speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It was one of the best.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

Secondly, I would like to address the issue that was raised by my colleague from the State of Kentucky. The State of Kentucky is just south of Illinois. We have coalfields too. Almost 75 percent of our State has coal under the ground. We mine that coal--not like we used to, but we still mine it and use it, and we have coal miners and coal companies, and coal is an important part of the Illinois economy.

The Senator from Kentucky came to the floor today to really take exception to a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency as it affected coal country in Kentucky. I do not know anything about the particulars of his complaint involving the Cumberland Lake and the Endangered Species Act, so I will not address that, but I would like to address one, more general topic.

To argue that the Environmental Protection Agency is the enemy of coal country is to completely ignore what has been in the newspapers for the last several weeks. There are 300,000 people in the State of West Virginia who are afraid to drink the water because of a leak from a tank that had a chemical solution used for cleaning coal. These people worry that drinking this water, cooking with this water, even bathing in this water is a danger to them. And where did they turn for some indication of safety for their families? This part of America--West Virginia, coal country, just like Kentucky and Illinois--turned to the Environmental Protection Agency. Of course they did. Is it safe? Can my child drink this water safely? Can I use it for cooking?

So to argue that the Environmental Protection Agency is the enemy of coal country is to ignore the obvious. They can make wrong decisions. We all do. Agencies do. But time and again, when we are in trouble, when it comes to something as basic as the safety of our drinking water, we turn to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and ask them to help us determine whether that water is safe.

Let me add parenthetically, Mr. President, your predecessor, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, was a leader, and I was happy to be his partner in trying to get to the bottom of the danger of many of these chemicals. Most Americans mistakenly believe this government reviews the toxicity or danger of all the chemicals in use in this country. In fact, only a small percentage is ever reviewed by the government. We, in fact, trust those who make and sell these chemicals to do the right thing, and many times they betray that trust and sell something dangerous which we discover later after the damage has been done.

Again, the role of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control, the role of the Federal Government in monitoring these chemicals for the safety of businesses and families and individuals across America is essential whether you live in the cities of Newark or Chicago or coal country, USA. So if we are going to go to war against the Environmental Protection Agency, let's at least be honest about the critical role they play. I hope that is remembered as we reflect on some of the things said on the floor this morning.

Mr. President, this is the conference report for the Agricultural Act of 2014. Senator Stabenow was on the floor earlier. She has stepped off now. She has poured her heart and soul into this document and into this work. Two years ago we passed the farm bill on the floor of the Senate--2 years ago. She did it with Senator Roberts of Kansas. I voted for it, and I thought it was an exceptional effort on her part. It went to the U.S. House of Representatives--as is the custom under the Constitution--to wither and die 2 years ago.

Then a year ago they said let's try again. Let's pass the farm bill again in the U.S. Senate in the hopes that the U.S. House of Representatives will take it up--a year ago. So a year ago Senator Stabenow and Senator Roberts sent this measure to the House of Representatives for consideration, and again it languished. It may have been one of the longest running conference committees in the history of Congress, but thank goodness for the perseverance of Senator Stabenow and many others; they produced this document.

For those who do not live in farm country, this may seem like a foreign text, but for those of us who do live in farm country, just reading the table of contents will tell you the important elements of this bill and why it is so critically important to Illinois and virtually every State in the Union.

I commend Senator Stabenow. As I said, she really poured her heart and soul into this document. There are provisions in here that many of us may never really appreciate that she fought for over a long period of time. I am going to acknowledge a few of those during the course of my formal remarks. But while she is here on the floor, let me give special credit to my colleague. She really took on this task and did it in an extraordinary way.

After years of expirations and short-term extensions, primarily due to the problems and inaction in the House of Representatives, this bill finally is going to provide farmers in Illinois and across the Nation with some guarantee of certainty on their future.

Compared to the presequester budget levels--that is budget talk around here for past budgets--this bill is going to save $23 billion over the next 10 years. This conference report before us works to do four things: invest in energy and research, help our rural communities grow--those of us who represent smalltown America know how important that is--ensure stability for our farmers who face the vicissitudes of weather and markets, and provides food assistance for those most in need both here and overseas.

These are amazing and important goals. I am glad Senator Stabenow and all the conferees applied themselves to make this happen. I am disappointed by one provision. I know Senator Stabenow will not be surprised. Despite modest reforms, we still provide extraordinary outside premium support for many farmers who buy crop insurance.

In fairness, this bill eliminates a price support program that was no longer defensible, a program that paid farmers in good times as well as bad. So it was not what it was designed to be, emergency help for farmers in need. She eliminated the direct payment program, by and large. That, to me, is a step forward.

Instead, this bill moves farmers toward crop insurance. Most of us, stepping back, say: That sounds like a responsible thing to do. A farmer buys an insurance policy, so if things go bad on the farm, a flood, a drought, some other problem, or the prices happen to be disastrous when the farmer goes to market, the insurance policy will make sure they can live to plant again. That is a good thing. But as I have said several times, any time you put the two words ``Federal'' and ``insurance'' in the same sentence, I advise my colleagues to step back and ask some questions. This is not insurance as you envision it. It is not a matter of automobile insurance, where the automobile owners pay enough in premiums to create a reserve to cover the exposure of accidents.

This is different. Under the Crop Insurance Program, similar to many Federal insurance programs, there is a massive Federal subsidy: 62 percent of the reserves that are necessary to make the program function are provided by the Federal Treasury, not by premiums paid by farmers. So it is a good program. It is a valued program. It is critically important. But let's keep our mind on the reality. It is heavily subsidized by the Federal Government.

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a very conservative Republican, and I decided to offer an amendment which said: If you are a farmer whose income is over $750,000 a year, we will reduce, slightly, the government's subsidy of your crop insurance. Over $750,000 in income, we will reduce, slightly, the 62-percent Federal subsidy on your crop insurance. You will pay slightly more in premiums because you are able to. You are better off than most.

This passed not once but twice on the floor of the Senate. As it turned out, the conferees, primarily from the House, hated this provision like the devil hates Holy water. So they struck this provision from the bill. That is unfortunate. Not only did we pass it twice, the House had passed on the floor an instruction to conferees to include it. Members wanted to be on record saying they liked this idea. When the conferees got their hands on it, they lopped it right out of the bill.

Let me ask the Presiding Officer to hold on to that thought for a moment while I get into another section of the bill. The areas where the House conferees worked up an appetite was when it came to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the so-called Food Stamp Program.

Again, let me commend Senator Stabenow as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. She called me several times to tell me about the battles she had to wage to protect the food stamp program.

Let's talk about the program for a minute. Almost 15 percent of households across America have trouble keeping food on the table. SNAP, the food program, provides 47 million Americans with essential food assistance. Eighty-three percent of the households that receive food stamps include a child or a person with disability or a senior citizen. Nearly 1 million veterans use the Food Stamp Program each year in America.

In Illinois, over 2 million people, almost one in seven residents, rely on SNAP benefits to buy the food they need. Who are these people? Who in the world needs food stamps in a great State such as the State of Illinois? Let me tell you about two or three of them.

One of them was the elderly lady whom I met at the Irving Park Methodist Church food pantry. She was on a walker. She had a very short haircut, suggesting that perhaps she had been through some chemotherapy or radiation. She soldiered her way right up there to get a bag of groceries. She sat down and I talked to her.

I said to her: Can you tell me a little bit about how you are doing.

Sure Senator. I am doing OK. I get $800 a month in Social Security.

I said: How in the world do you live in Chicago on $800 a month?

Ain't easy, Senator. Got to pay the rent. Got to pay the utility bills and the basics. She said: I come to this food pantry and one other one. Each one of them gives me 3 days' worth of food. So I get about 1 month, 6 days' worth of food, out of the two food pantries. I thank them for that. I get food stamps worth about $130 a month.

That is it, folks. That is what she lives on, an elderly person. When the House Republicans said what we need to do is cut $40 billion--that was their original recommendation--$40 billion out of food stamps, they apparently had never met this lady and what she was up against or they might have met a couple of workers whom I had a press conference with on Sunday in Chicago, working full time and qualifying for food stamps. One was a fellow who worked on the west side of Chicago at a used car lot. Does it all, he said--cleans the cars, shovels the lot, sells the cars, and gets paid $8.25 an hour, which is our State minimum wage--four kids, his wife is sick and cannot work.

He gets food stamps. He needs them to put food on the table for the kids, for a full-time worker at a minimum wage job. Then on the other side was a lady who is a waitress. She told the story of being a single mom. Her son is now 19. She is heading him off to the City College of Chicago. That is a great deal. But she works a job which has a guaranteed minimum wage in Illinois of about $4.50 an hour. That is what waitresses are guaranteed--tipped wage. Nationally, the tipped wage is $2.13 an hour. She said: I do not work in a fancy restaurant. I am lucky to come home with $10 or $20 in tips in a day.

So do the math. She said: Some days they do not call me in to work. I get nothing. She relies on food stamps too, a woman who is ready to work and works hard, standing all day, waiting tables. So in come the House Republicans saying we need to come down hard on these people, these lazy people on food stamps. I wish they would meet some of those folks who use food stamps to get by, to survive. These people are our neighbors. They are hard-working people who lost their jobs or got sick. They are seniors living on a limited fixed income.

This bill does cut $8 billion out of SNAP, the Food Stamp Program. I understand the cuts that were made. I think Senator Stabenow and others have done these carefully. I do not want any fraud in this program. She does not either. We think we have tightened it so it will not affect the payments to those who are truly eligible and those who need the help. Yet it will make sure the taxpayers are treated fairly as well.

But look at the contrast. Some of the conferees walked into this hearing and said that farmers who make almost $1 million a year should not have any reduction in their subsidy for crop insurance, but people such as the lady at the Irving Park Methodist Church food pantry, being paid $800 a month, we ought to take a hard look at the $130 a month we give this lady. That is upside down. That does not reflect the values of this country or the priorities we need to face.

I thank the Senator from Michigan. She worked long and hard, was a real champion when it came to SNAP, the Food Stamp Program. Incidentally, the good news is, as the economy improves and people get back to work, the number of people on food stamps is going down, which is what we want to see. But does it not say something about us as a nation, a caring, compassionate Nation, that we are going to be there to help those families living in our towns and our States, going to our churches, when they are struggling to put food on the table?

Why was that such an inviting target for some of the House conferees? I do not understand that. There is a lot of money that can be saved in government. We do not want to waste a penny of it. But let's focus primarily on those who can afford to pay and are getting a Federal subsidy as opposed to those who are just struggling to get by and are asking for a helping hand. This bill does so much. I could not even start to describe all of the different areas dealing with risk on the farm, key investments in energy and research, ag research, programs to help rural communities grow, and helping those in need.

Most importantly, this reauthorization gives Illinois farmers certainty about farm programs. They need it. That is something they have not had for the last 3 years. I am going to support this bill. I wish we had been able to preserve the provision that Senator Coburn and I included. But I believe, on balance, it is an important step forward in farm country across America.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source