It allows 100 percent deductibility of health insurance by those who are self-employed beginning next year. And it accelerates exemptions from estate and gift taxes. This initiative includes livestock feed assistance, increased market transition payments, disaster payments for crop yield and quality losses. And extra assistance for those who have incurred crop loses over several years, such as in the upper plains and the South. The Speaker of the House also announced that he will call up for passage next week, a bill to authorize fast track negotiation of a trade agreement, to open new markets and break down barriers to trade.
Market access is very important to agriculture and to our nation's economy in general.
Ninety-five percent of the world's population lives outside the United States. Without good trade agreements, that give us free access to the world market place, we cannot prosper in agriculture or any other business that depends so much on exports. The president has failed to provide leadership in his own party on legislation that would provide fast track negotiating authority. He and his Secretary of Agriculture should do more to improve our trade relationships in this hemisphere and beyond. The export- enhancement program, for example, could be utilized more effectively to increase our exports.