Date: 2002-05-02
Speaker: DAN MILLER (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to this agriculture welfare bill we will be voting on later this morning. In 1996. this Congress passed 2 historic pieces of legislation. one was Welfare Reform and one was the Freedom to Farm. The idea was to get people less dependent on government. to get people more opportunity and more freedom. The Welfare Reform bill has been a success. We have reduced the welfare rolls by 50 percent. but. more importantly. we have given people the freedom and opportunity for their American dream. to not have to rely on a check from the Federal Government. And that was the concept with Freedom to Farm. but it did not work out quite right. We are just pouring money into the program every year classified as emergency spending. and now this year we are going to make it all entitlement spending and make more people dependent on the Federal Government. This bill. sadly. goes in the wrong direction. in that it costs more for the American taxpayer. it costs. the American consumer more. and it is this same reliance on Federal Government handouts that is so unfortunate. Most of the money goes just to a handful of crops. wheat. rice. corn. cotton. and soybeans. But it goes into a lot of other areas. and that is how it gets its widespread support on the floor of the House. We got rid of wool. mohair. and honey subsidies in 1996. but they are back. So now the taxpayers are going to subsidize wool. mohair. and honey. We have added some things. like small chickpeas. dry peas. and lentils. I do not know why the Federal Government has to be in this business. The peanut program. and I like peanuts. but it is going to be. I think. like a $4 billion cost to the American taxpayers. This whole bill. they say. is only 77some billion. But that is on top of the $100 billion entitlement right there now. So it will cost $170 billion. And if we really look at the true cost of this and base it on how poorly they estimated the cost in the 1996 bill. we are probably talking about a $340 billion cost. A $340 billion bill. and we are trying to find nmore money for the Pell grants. the war on terrorism. homeland security. cancer research and biomedical research. We have a lot of needs for money. but we will spend $340 billion on this. Now. what this bill does is it encourages overproduction. Take the sugar program. We produce too much sugar because we have a program that encourages too much. Last year. the Federal Government bought $430 million worth of sugar and we are storing it. We are storing it. And what we will do with this bill is. encourage more production so we can store more sugar. And this is true with wheat. and corn. and cotton. and rice. All we are going to do is just produce more and more and store more and more. and the whole thing. in my opinion. will implode. This hurts the small farmer. Eightyeight percent of the money goes to the top 20 percent of the farmers. Bottom 80 percent. the smaller farmers. only get 12 percent of the money. So I encourage my colleagues to oppose this. For liberals. it is good to oppose this because it costs the consumer more. It costs the consumer more. It is estimated at $2.500 more per consumer. And the environmental organizations are all opposing this because it does not do enough for the environment. For my conservatives. it should be a nobrainer. This just expands the role of Federal Government and makes people more dependent on the Federal Government. And for everyone else. this is just bad economic policy. Because what we really should believe in this country is to give people more opportunity and freedom. rather than coming to Washington to beg for a check and creating yet another new entitlement program. I think this has gone in the wrong direction. it is unfortunate. and I hope we can defeat the bill today.