S7652 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD— SENATE June 5, 1995 

be suggested that this country must 

send troops everywhere in the world. 

Bosnia is in the European neighborhood. We have spent a great deal of 

money and offered a great deal of support over the years to NATO. It seems 

to me that under the aegis of NATO 

and in the European Community we 

should be able to expect a substantial 

commitment from the Europeans to 

try to resolve the issue of the current 

role in Bosnia. I notice that is essentially what is now happening. The European countries are committing more 

and are getting involved in a more aggressive way to respond to this, and I 

appreciate that because I think that is 

the way this needs to be resolved. 

I most especially do not think it is 

wise or appropriate to send United 

States troops to the ground in Bosnia. 

I think a couple of centuries of history 

in the Balkans ought to tell us that 

foreign powers attempting to achieve 

certain goals in that region of the 

world have generally paid a terrible 

cost and with none of their goals 

achieved. 

So, Mr. President, I think the President of the United States has made the 

right decision in the last couple of 

days. I support that decision, and I 

hope that will remain the decision of 

the administration as the months go 

by. 

I do hope and pray for the sake of the 

people in that region that somehow 

and some way this war can be stopped. 

As I have said, I think the United 

States has participated and will participate in an appropriate way to the 

logistics and equipment, overflights, 

and other approaches under the aegis 

of the United Nations. 

I think war is a tragedy always, but 

in this circumstance—I have been to 

what was formerly the country of 

Yugoslavia. I recall, in fact, when I was 

there, there was a forest fire in the 

country. I recall the people of that region coming together, as people do in 

crisis situations, and working together 

to try to respond to a natural disaster. 

It occurred to me that people of the 

then Yugoslavia are very much like the 

people I grew up with in North Dakota, 

like the people of the United States—

good, wonderful, hard-working people. 

Yet that society has split apart, and we 

see in that former Yugoslavia now unspeakable horrors of war visited upon 

so many families and innocent people. 

I hope and pray that one day there will 

be peace in that region. 

f 

HELP FOR THE FAMILY FARMERS 

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last 

week, when the Senate was not in session and we had no votes, I was in 

North Dakota. In part of my visit to 

North Dakota, I visited my home county of Hettinger County, a relatively 

small county in southwestern North 

Dakota. It is down in ranching country, and there are also small farms. 

They raise a substantial amount of 

wheat. 

I was reminded of the circumstances 

of rural America again. My home county lost 20 percent of its population in 

the 1980’s, and it lost another 11 percent of its population in the first half 

of the 1990’s. The fact is that rural 

counties—and, yes, Hettinger County, 

ND—is shrinking like a prune. 

The farm bill that we have in this 

country to try to help family farmers 

is not working. At least it is not working to keep family farmers on the farm 

and make a decent living doing so. We 

are losing ground in rural America. 

It is a paradox that our cities are 

more crowded and exhibit all of the 

problems of overcrowding at the same 

time that my home county, and virtually every rural county throughout 

the Farm Belt, is losing population. 

We are told that this is a global economy and that there are these dislocations. In a global economy, we are told, 

there are some winners and there are 

some losers, and rural areas are losers. 

I do not understand why a global economy means that the big get bigger and 

the rich get richer and the rest somehow get hurt; the small do not make it. 

I do not understand that. That is not 

an economy that makes sense to me. 

That is not an economy that equates 

reward with effort. 

It seems to me that we ought to have 

an economy that rewards less speculation and rewards more real production. 

Yet, the economy does not seem to do 

that. It is a high time these days on 

Wall Street, as all of us know, but it is 

hard times on Main Street of Hettinger 

County and small towns trying to 

make a go of it. 

We have in a global economy the 

spectacle of American jobs going overseas, and those jobs that are left here 

are jobs paying less with fewer benefits. It is, we are told, a function of the 

global economy, the economy of economic realities. 

Well, it is not an economic reality 

which I am prepared to accept. I do not 

think the people of the Farm Belt are 

prepared to accept it either. 

We learned long ago in this country 

that just like the wagon trains that 

forged west, you do not move ahead by 

leaving some behind. That was a good 

lesson from the wagon trains because it 

is the only way they could survive, and 

it is still a good lesson for our country 

today. We cannot, as a country, move 

ahead while leaving some behind. 

I think that as we discuss this year 

the construction of a new 5-year farm 

bill, we ought to think about that, 

what works to give family farmers in 

America a decent opportunity to make 

a living so that we do not see this exodus of the family farm to the major cities where overcrowding already exists. 

Well, the farm bill will be written 

now in the next 60 or 80 days, and the 

question is: What will it be? If it is like 

the last two farm bills, it will be the 

same but less of it. So it will be less of 

the same. So you take something that 

simply does not work and say let us do 

less of it. It is a concept that does not 

make much sense to me. 

The farm bill ought to be a farm bill 

that cares about family farmers and, if 

it does not, we ought not to have a 

farm bill at all; we do not need it. The 

U.S. Department of Agriculture was 

founded under Abraham Lincoln in the 

1860’s with nine employees. That behemoth now has over 100,000 employees. 

In the last 15 years, we had about a 25- 

percent decrease in farm population—

that is, the number of people living on 

farms—and about a 28-percent increase 

in the number of people running the 

farm program. It not only does not 

work, it is so frightfully complicated 

that nobody in this country fully understands it. 

So why do we not do it differently 

and construct a new farm program that 

has as its preamble one central tenet, 

which is that we have a farm program 

in this country to try to give an opportunity to family-size farms to make a 

living. 

Why is that necessary? Well, corporate agrifactories can farm successfully because they have the economic 

strength to withstand two risks that 

farmers face. The first is the risk that 

you may not get a crop. You might 

have excessive rain or hail or insects. 

You might plant a crop and get nothing. 

The second risk is, if you get the 

crop, you may not get a price, because, 

in the meantime, international grain 

prices for wheat or barley may have 

plummeted, and so you have a crop but 

no price. Those two risks are risks that 

the big agrifactories can stomach and 

can overcome, but family-size farms do 

not have the financial strength to do 

so. 

So if we want in this country family 

farms producing our food, then we 

must have some kind of a farm program. It is that simple. 

Now, should the farm program be one 

that rewards the big folks at the expense of the little folks? I do not think 

so. We have had a fundamental disconnection in the kind of farm program 

that we have had in this country. 

We have believed that we can control 

the supply of grain and therefore increase price. In order to do that, you 

want all of the farmers in the country 

in the farm program, which means you 

especially want the big farmers. If you 

get the big farmers in the farm program, you spend most of your money 

on the big farmers. So most of the 

money for the farm program has gone 

to the big farmers. 

The fact is that we have not controlled supply and we have not affected 

price. Why? Because we plant less in 

this country and Canada plants more, 

Argentina plants more, the French 

plant more. So, it is a fundamentally 

flawed strategy. 

We should decide now to disconnect 

from it and not do any of that. We 

should decide that the farm program 

ought to be a mechanism by which we 

will provide decent prices to the output 

of a family-size farm. 

mmaher on MIKETEMP with SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS

June 5, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD— SENATE S7653 

In the current farm program there is 

a circumstance where the Prince of 

Liechtenstein was paid farm program 

benefits to a farm in Texas. Does anybody think the Prince of Liechtenstein 

is a Texas farmer? Of course not. 

We had a bunch of Texans, a farmer 

coalition, so they could farm in Montana. They plowed a bunch of ground 

and seeded it by helicopter. They were 

not farming the land. They were farming the farm program, so they could 

get $20,000, $40,000, or 50,000 payments 

each. 

We have a national newsman in this 

country that everyone probably has 

read about recently—who I assume 

lives in Washington, DC—gets $90,000 

under the wool and mohair program. I 

bet that newsman does not live with 

the sheep most of the year. He is living 

in Washington, DC, or New York City. 

It seems to me the farm program ought 

to be targeted to family-size farms. 

Now what I propose is a new approach, and I hope the Senate Agriculture Committee will look at it. I 

think it will do the right thing and 

save the Government money. I propose 

we structure farm program price benefits or farm program price supports or 

the safety net for farm programs, so 

that the strongest price goes to the 

first increment of production. 

We say if a farmer raises 20,000 bushels of wheat, we provide a price of $4.50 

a bushel. We hope the farmer gets 

money from the marketplace, but if 

not, we provide $4.50 for the bushel for 

the first 20,000 bushels of wheat, and 

that is all the money we have. We are 

sorry. If they want to farm the whole 

county, God bless you, they have every 

right to farm the whole county, but the 

Federal Government does not have to 

be the financial partner beyond the 

first 20,000 bushels. If a farmer wants to 

farm beyond that level, they are on 

their own. 

That ought to be the case in all farm 

programs. 

In the dairy program, I have never 

understood, for example, why there is 

need to support a dairy operation in 

California that milks 3,500 cows every 

day. I do not know if anybody here has 

milked a cow. I have milked a cow, but 

if you milk 3,500 cows a day and get a 

price support under every gallon of 

milk you pull from the cows, that just 

does not make sense. 

It seems to me if we have price supports for milk, we say we might provide a decent price support for the milk 

from 80 cows. That is hard work for a 

farmer running a farm. However, if a 

farmer wants to buy the 81st cow, guess 

what? When they sit on the milk stool, 

do a little milking, those farmers 

would be milking on their own risk. 

I think that is what we ought to do 

with the farm program. If we are not 

willing to recognize that the farm program is one that is designed to try to 

help the family farmers stay on the 

farm—and those are important things 

to care about from social and economic 

policy reasons—if that is not the purpose of it, I say we should get rid of the 

farm program. 

We do not need to provide a stimulant for corporate agrifactories to 

plow. They will plow. Corporations will 

plow the whole country. As soon as 

they have plowed the whole country 

and cornered the supply of food, guess 

what? Go to the grocery store and see 

what the price of food will be. The corporations of this country will darn sure 

make certain that consumers would be 

paying well above the cost of production for food. 

Of course, now we do not do that. We 

go to the store and buy a box of elbow 

macaroni. Let us see how that relates 

to the price of durum wheat. Somebody 

out on a farm raises durum wheat and 

he grinds it into semolina flour, and 

the semolina flour is produced into 

elbow macaroni. 

I can show when the price of durum 

wheat goes down 2 bucks a bushel, the 

price of elbow macaroni goes up. I can 

show when the price of wheat goes 

down the price of cereal goes up. I can 

show that the snap, crackle, and pop in 

Rice Krispies often brings more to the 

people that produce the snap and the 

crackle, than the person that produces 

the rice. 

It is the same with puffed wheat. The 

puffer gets more than the wheat. It is 

the same with corn flakes. The flaker 

gets more than the person that rides 

the tractor and raises the corn. 

That is the way things have worked. 

It is not right. 

We have an opportunity this year to 

write a farm program that produces 

the right result. Now for social and 

economic reasons, this country ought 

to care about who produces its foodstuffs. It ought to care about the Farm 

Belt. It ought to care about preserving 

a network of family farmers. For that 

reason, we ought to have a safety net—

not for a set of golden arches or for the 

largest agrifactories—but, a safety net 

for family farmers. 

We can do that. We can do it in a responsible and reasonable way—and we 

can save the taxpayers’ money at the 

same time—if we simply decide the 

current farm program is not working 

and we construct a new farm program, 

a better farm program, one that gives 

some hope to family farmers for a 

change. 

It is interesting that with all the discussion around this town about reform 

and reinventing, the odds are that unless things change in the next 60 or 80 

days, we will see the same old tired, 

failed policies with respect to agriculture. 

I hope that the proposal that I am 

making this year—the legislative proposal for targeting farm program support prices to family-sized farms—and 

the roles by others that try to really 

substantially reform the farm program 

will this year give us a change. It does 

not make sense to do less of the same, 

when the same does not work. 

Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The 

clerk will call the roll. 

The legislative clerk proceeded to 

call the roll. 

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I ask 

unanimous consent that the order for 

the quorum call be rescinded. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without 

objection, it is so ordered. 

f 

THE UNBALANCED BUDGET 

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I 

have just returned from my State of 

South Dakota, where I listened to the 

farmers, small businessmen, students, 

wives, and citizens of South Dakota for 

9 days. I found many were thanking me 

for voting for the balanced budget resolution, the Domenici-Dole budget that 

passed the U.S. Senate about 2 weeks 

ago. The people of our country want 

change. They want us to do something 

about the huge deficit that has been 

built up and they feel we have taken 

the first step. The message I heard loud 

and clear was, ‘‘Please take the second 

and third steps now.’’

For the first time since I have been 

in the Senate, this body passed a real 

budget that will move us toward a balanced budget in the year 2002. But even 

with a balanced budget in 2002, we will 

still have a huge deficit. In some of my 

high school graduation speeches, I predicted they will have to pay a tax surcharge on their income taxes for most 

of their lives to help pay down the Federal deficit, or at least pay interest on 

it. 

I know the dullest story in the world 

probably is the Federal deficit, but 

cattlemen are aware that our budget 

that we passed here, if we stick to it, 

will result in lower interest rates. It 

will also result in a stable dollar so 

that there can be international trade. 

Senior citizens understand that the 

cuts in Medicare are merely a cut in 

the rate of increase. Medicare has been 

increasing at a 10-percent increase. 

This budget allows about a 7-percent 

increase, and it provides for streamlining, doing away with fraud and 

abuse, and other steps within Medicare 

and Medicaid so they can still provide 

solid service. 

Even the Democrats’ study predicted 

that Medicare would go bankrupt by 

the year 2000 unless something is done. 

I find it very strange that many are 

criticizing the Domenici-Dole budget 

but they did not provide an alternative 

here on the Senate floor. There was the 

alternative of President Clinton which 

every Member of this Chamber voted 

against. 

I do not mean to be partisan, but I 

would say I am very proud and I have 

found my constituents thankful that 

Congress has finally started to address 

the budgetary deficit problem. There is 

also a strong feeling among senior citizens that to keep our currency solvent, 

our dollar stable, and to avoid inflation 

is worth a great deal to them. This 

budget will start to do that if we stick 

to it. 

mmaher on MIKETEMP with SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS