Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. I move to strike the last word.
The CHAIR. The gentleman from Oregon is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. I rise in support of the amendment from my good friend from Arizona. I appreciate his work over the years as we've tried to refocus attention and our resources in areas that are more productive for most American farmers and ranchers, for the taxpayer, and for the general economy.
I just heard my good friend talk about his concern about who's going to feed America in the future. Well, the issue of having these lavish agricultural subsidies that are concentrated three-quarters in the top 10 producers, and they are not people who are in the main producing food, the fruits and vegetables that people care about that would add to nutrition. The people that are in my agricultural community in Oregon are basically shut out. 87% don't receive it. They are not getting support for some of the things that are market neutral in terms of marketing, in terms of research that's being slashed, in terms of commonsense support for meeting their environmental objectives to protect clean water and habitat.
Being able to start tamping this down is essential. The AGI limitation, the one that I had on the floor last night that would limit the total amount of payment, these are things that there's never a good time to deal with them. I've been through three farm bill cycles. I've heard the body express itself in terms of instructions to the conferees and watched them disregard it when it came, for example, to limitation of payment.
I would like to turn to my friend from Arizona to yield some time. Before I do, I just want to correct one misapprehension that is floating around about the amendment that we had on the floor last night that limited title 1 payments to $125,000 per entity.
Now, some people are pretending that this would somehow affect disaster payments or crop insurance. No. It is just title 1 payments. It's very simple. It's set forth in the bill. Anybody can read it. And it's not going to deal, for example, with disaster payments. But on this note, I would like to yield to my good friend from Arizona, thanking him for his continued partnership and advocacy in this area.
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate his clarification. I agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment. It's insane that instead of changing our trade-distorting, unjustified subsidies, that we're instead going to subsidize the cotton industry both in the United States and in Brazil. It's certainly not the approach that we should be taking at a time when we're going to have to do business differently. We talk about people getting economic haircuts. What happens today is that 31 congressional districts get more than half of all the subsidies. They, not coincidentally, are districts that are concentrated on the Ag Committee and have a different perspective than the majority of the people in the House.
I'm hopeful we can work our will with these amendments.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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