Date: 1985-12-18
Speaker: DE LA GARZA (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker. the House will take its final vote today on one of the most important national issues we have faced in this session of Congress: Economic survival of large segments of American agriculture. The House will vote today on the conference report on the Food Security Act of 1985. H.R. 2100. This is a massive piece of legislation. and I know that Members will have different views on almost every one of the 18 titles. But I believe you can sum up this bill in one fourletter word: Good. This is a good bill because it says to the. agriculture community and the nation that in spite of all the budget constraints. and in spite of all the problems we face. the Congress does recognize that American agriculture is in. trouble. and the Congress is not going to jerk the safety net out from under the American farmer. This is a good bill because it will help make American agriculture more competitive while it preserves basic income protection to the greatest degree possible at this time in order to get the bill through this Congress and signed into law. Mr. Speaker. I know perfectly well that some Members believe this bill does not give us all the income protection we need and I agree. The situation in some parts of rural America today is critical. Years of low prices. declining exports and collapsing land values have produced a crisis in some areas. -The trouble has spilled over to produce serious problems in agriculture credit. and we will be dealing with that issue in a separate piece of legislation later today. If I could write this farm bill by myself. it would include stronger provisions for higher target prices. But no single member alone can write this bill. The final product must be one on which the House. the Senate. and the President can agree. Mr. Speaker. legislation is the art of the possible. If we want a farm bill. it must be one that can get the votes needed to pass the House and the Senate today. I believe that the House conferees have brought you a final product that was written within the art of the possible. and that the American agriculture community can live with. It provides a degree of protection that I hope will help many farmers to survive until better times. Mr. Speaker. we need a farm bill. We need it. because agriculture is this Nations most basic industry. What happens to agriculture eventually effects the entire economy and to every group in this country. North as well as South. East as well as West. Urban as well as rural. Every Member of this House. has a basic stake in giving our agricultural community a chance to survive and to return to economic health. Let me speak briefly about costs.This bill will cost money. but as I told the House when we passed our own bill. this conference report meets our congressional budget targets. It will cost more than the proposal the administration brought us for what most of us thought was a prescription for tearing down the effectiveness of farm programs. But it will cost billions of dollars less than the cost of existing law. When this bill passed the House in October. it met the congressional budget target. nearly $8 billion under the baseline cost of extending current law. according to the Congressional Budget Office. A preliminary estimate of the conference bill shows that we will have savings below baselinefor the 198688 budget cycleof nearly $11 billion compared with the requirement of just under $8 billion. Now lets look briefly at potential costs. and I ask the House to remember that these are projections based on assumptions of possible production. domestic demand. foreign demand. and weather for years into the future. At best. and the experts are clear about this. these are educated guesses which can be changed greatly if the weather changes or if any of a number of other key factors should change. The Agriculture Department has estimated that the price support portions of the bill over the 3year budget cyclebased on November commodity stock estimatesmay average 1.7 percent of the total Federal budget. By the fifth year of our bill. price support program costs are estimated to be down to under 1 percent of the total Federal budget For the entire 5 years. the average would be under 1.5 percent of the total Federal budget. If you take the entire farm bill. including all other programs like farm credit. research. overseas food aid and everything else. the bill covers spending which would average just over 3.5 percent of the total Federal budget in the first year and less than 3.2 percent for the entire 5 years. At the same time. the House should be aware that this is not going to be the last word on farm policy. The budget reduction bill which became law a few days ago will affect agriculture as well as most other Government programs. and we will have to keep the situation in agriculture under continual review. Let me speak briefly. also. about the conservation section of our bill. I believe this represents one of the most significant soil protection measures adopted by Congress since I became a Member of this House. I think these provisions of the bill will be remembered long after our current economic problems have been forgotten. H.R. 2100 includes 5 year commodity stabilization programs for dairy products. wool and mohair. wheat. feed grains. cotton. rice. peanuts. soybeans. sugar and honey. But in addition to those programs which appear in the first nine titles of the bill. H.R 2100 includes a great many other important provisions. Title 10 includes general provisions applying to groups of commodities. Title 11 covers trade programs. These include programs to help expand our commercial trade. programs to continue the Food and Peace Program and to expand some of our other efforts to relieve hunger abroad. and a compromise on cargo preference. Title 12 is the conservation title. It in. cludes the new sodbuster and swampbuster programs which are designed to protect erodible land and wetlands for future generations. Title 13 covers programs for agricultural credit and rural development. This includes an interest buydown program for some borrowers who have loans guaranteed by the Farmers Home Administration. It also includes new rules to govern the way in which the Agriculture Department handles foreclosed land. Title 14 covers programs for agricultural research. extension. and teaching. It provides some useful and potentially important new steps in research including a directive to develop appropriate controls on the development of biotechnology. Title 15 includes the Food Stamp Program and related provisions including an extension of the temporary Food. Assistance Program. In this title. we extend the Food Stamp Program with some needed and modest improvements for the needy. including the socalled working poor. Title 16 includes a group of significant marketing programs. These include authorization for new programs of farmerfinanced beef.and pork promotion and provisions dealing with marketing orders and grain inspection. Title 17 includes a group of provisions. dealing with food processing and inspection. new regulations for the makeup of agricultural stabilization and conservation committees. and the creation of a National Agricultural Policy Commission. Also. this title includes improvements in the National Aquaculture Improvement Program. improvements in the Federal program for protecting animal welfare. and it includes provisions to modernize the VirusSerumToxin Act. Title 18 includes the effective date for the bill which is. for the commodity programs and many others. a 5 year bill. Mr. Speaker. I know that many Members are especially concerned at this moment with what the bill does for our major commodity programs. Before I go Into fuller details. let me briefly summarize the major thrust of what we have in the conference report. For wheat. feed grains. cotton and rice we try to make our crops more competitive on world markets so that we can increase sales and hopefully improve market prices for farmers. This will be done by programs including more flexible price support loan rates. At the same time. we try to protect the farmers total return for his crop by maintaining target prices. For wheat and feed grains. we have what amounts to nearly a 3 year freeze with reductions that cannot total more than 10 percent over the life of the bill. Cotton and rice also will be held at current levels in 1986 with later reductions that cannot amount to more than 10 percent over the life of the bill. The House. as you know. approved what amounts to a 5year freeze for target prices. and I believe the compromise we achieved comes much closer to our bill than it did to either the Senate bill or the administrations proposals. For dairy products. our bill is a compromise. It retains the socalled whole herd surplus reduction program to give dairy farmers a chance to deal with the problem of milk surpluses. and it says in effect that if we cant solve the problem in this way there will have to be more reductions in price supports. Now. Mr. Speaker. I want to review the bill in some further detail. Because of the pressure of time. the material which follows is not organized to follow the exact breakdown of the titles of the bill. Instead. it will give the House an ideavery briefly in some casesof how we have dealt with many but not all of the items in this massive piece of legislation: The major provisions of the bill include: