Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013 - Continued
Floor Speech
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Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, while I very much appreciate the amendment of Senator Durbin and Senator Coburn, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
Crop insurance is insurance, and the farmer gets a bill not a check. They get a bill. The question is whether we are going to provide a discount so it is an affordable policy.
We ended subsidies through direct payments. We want them to move to a voluntary system of crop insurance. The bill they get has to be a bill they can afford to be able to provide the coverage, and then there is no payout unless they have a loss, such as a flood, drought, or whatever has happened. It is insurance.
There are several reasons this is not the same vote the Senate took last year on this amendment. With the historic agreement to attach conservation compliance to crop insurance--potentially reducing the acres and numbers of producers covered by crop insurance--will only reduce the environmental benefits and could lead to draining wetlands and plowing highly erodable land.
Let me say this another way: Of course most of the crop insurance goes to the largest farmers because they have the most land to insure. Just by definition, the larger the insurance policy, the more they are trying to cover. The question is--and the reason conservationists and environmentalists have come together--is because they want the large tracts to become conservation compliant.
There is even more environmental impact on the large tracts than on the small tracts, which is why we saw this historic agreement between 30-some different farm, environmental, and conservation groups to say: We will support crop insurance, but you have to do conservation compliance on all of the land.
Limiting crop insurance support to producers will cause producers with large pieces of land to leave the insurance system, losing the conservation benefits and possibly increasing the costs, again, to smaller providers. If everybody is not in, then the cost goes up for who is in.
In fact, we know if we take the largest purchasers out, it is estimated we could see premiums go up nearly 40 percent for those who are currently in the system, and we are more likely to go back to ad hoc disaster assistance.
In the drought of 2012, one of the worst on record for U.S. farmers, there were no calls for our crops to receive ad hoc disaster assistance. The corn, wheat, soybean growers, and others across the country were able to survive. Why? Because of crop insurance, and it worked.
I urge colleagues to take a second look at this. We are talking about preserving a historic agreement that came together around conservation compliance. We want to make sure all of the land that is in crop insurance is covered, and we are protecting our soil and water.
I ask for a "no'' vote on the amendment.
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Ms. STABENOW. I appreciate the confidence my friend from Oklahoma has about what business decisions will be made. Let's assume they don't walk away from crop insurance; they will be walking away from conservation compliance if they are not required to do that.
If this agreement falls apart--and it is an agreement that was delicately put together with over 30 different farm organizations, as well as conservation and environmental folks, to work together to support crop insurance. But to require environmental compliance--they may or may not make decisions about crop insurance. I do know if they do leave, the folks in the program, which are small- and medium-sized programs--as a matter of economics, like any other kind of insurance--will see their costs go up. We do know that.
We also have this broader question that relates to the large farmers the Senators are talking about where the benefit to having comprehensive conservation compliance for our country is a benefit we want to make sure we keep intact. It would be undermined with the passage of this amendment.
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Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I would urge a ``no'' vote for a number of reasons, but let me simply say the problem with increasing crop insurance premiums by about 40 percent, which is what this does, is we are going to reduce participation in crop insurance, reduce coverage, and drive up premiums. Most important for me, we have a historic agreement to tie crop insurance to conservation compliance, and this would undermine that effort.
I would urge a ``no'' vote.
Before proceeding, I wish to thank everyone for their good work up to this point and announce there will be no further votes. The next vote will be at 5:30 p.m. on the Monday we return, and we will proceed and complete the bill.
I thank the Chair.
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Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments to thank colleagues for their work this week, to thank my partner Senator Cochran and both of our staffs, who have been working very hard to complete the process of this very important jobs bill called the farm bill.
Let me take a moment to remind everyone that we are talking about 16 million jobs in America that come because of agriculture, because of what we do in the food industry altogether. It is incredibly important we complete this work. I am very confident when we come back into session in another week that we will complete our process.
I thank our majority leader and the Republican leader for their support in our moving through this process, and certainly our majority leader, Senator Reid, who has been incredibly supportive in working with us and giving us the time to come directly from committee to the floor of the Senate and to work with colleagues through amendments on both sides of the aisle to get this done. We are doing this the way we have always done it, which is in a bipartisan fashion, working through both Democratic and Republican amendments. At the end we will have produced what I believe is the most reform-minded farm bill in decades.
Let me also remind my colleagues we have before us a bill that is different than anything I can think of actually in terms of deficit reduction. We have a bill that has over $24 billion in spending cuts put forward by our committee and supported by the communities that are affected--$24 billion in deficit reduction, which is much more than we would be required to do if we went with the across-the-board cuts that have been so debated with the sequester. The Agriculture Department and the farm bill are responsible for $6 billion in deficit reduction through the sequester. We have added four times to that amount in deficit reduction, but we are doing it in a smart, focused way, making tough decisions, setting priorities, eliminating subsidies that don't make sense anymore, and strengthening risk management, market-oriented programs.
We have debated, and will debate more, something called crop insurance, which I will remind my colleagues does not allow for someone getting a check. They get a bill. They pay for crop insurance. We do it in a partnership between the Federal Government and farmers to help them have affordable risk management. That is what we strengthen in this bill. We have been told by farmers all across the country that the most important risk management tool for them is insurance--crop insurance that is affordable.
We have also in this legislation done something that is historic, which is as we have moved from subsidies to insurance, we are tying conservation compliance to the purchase of insurance. This is a very important policy, and we have many groups--over 30 groups--that have come together, and I want to commend all the commodity groups and the Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union and all those that came together, along with environmentalists and conservation organizations, to put a real priority on both a strong risk management system called crop insurance and a strong conservation policy called conservation compliance. This is a very important part of our bill as we look to savings.
Frankly, we have looked at savings in every single part of this bill. We have 12 different bills all put together called titles in this thing we call a farm bill, and we have looked at savings in each area of the bill. We have, for instance, taken a hard look at our conservation programs and decided that instead of 23 different kinds of programs, we actually could consolidate and streamline down to 13. We put them in four different buckets of activities, with a lot of flexibility, working with community groups and grassroots groups on conservation, and saw that we could save money, which we have done.
We listened to mayors and rural communities around Michigan and around the country--those who represent townships and counties--who said make sure you continue to have a strong rural economic development presence. Because once you get outside the cities in Michigan or around the country every community is partnering with rural development for business loans, water and sewer projects, transportation, firetrucks, police cars, housing, and all those efforts working through rural development. But we heard from our local officials that it was complicated. We currently, in law, have 11 different definitions of ``rural.'' That made no sense. They said: Could you please give us one? We looked through all the different programs and streamlined it and now we have one definition, so it is easier to work with, less paperwork, and it makes much more sense.
We have continued to strengthen the part of our agricultural economy called "specialty crops.'' This is near and dear to me in Michigan--fresh fruits and vegetables and other areas that are very important to many States, including mine. The organic community is a fast-growing part of agriculture, and so we strengthen that as well.
We have looked from Mississippi to Michigan, California to Delaware, and everything in between, to make sure this is a bill that works for all parts of agriculture, and I am pleased to say we have been able to do that.
We have also made sure the energy title is strong, both in supporting farmers and ranchers who want to be focused on energy efficiency on the farm or the ranch, and also in expanding efforts beyond our traditional biofuel efforts to something that is near and dear to my heart which is called bio-based manufacturing.
We have very exciting opportunities in America. I know our Presiding Officer is as passionate about manufacturing as I am, and we now have the opportunity, working with our agricultural groups, to create ways to replace petroleum in plastics and other types of materials that we have today--synthetic fibers and so on--with agricultural by-products.
If you buy many of our great American automobiles today, you might find you are sitting on foam that is actually made from soybean oil instead of petroleum oil. So you might be sitting on soybeans in the seats. Many parts of the interior of the automobiles that folks are now buying actually have some kind of agricultural by-product, whether it is wheat chaff or corn husks or soybean oil. So we know we can use these new opportunities to not only create markets but create situations that are much better for our environment and that create jobs. This is a new and exciting part of what we are doing to expand opportunities through the energy title as well.
We also are very pleased and proud of the efforts around nutrition for folks in this country who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves hit hard by the economy. We want to make sure they continue to have the support they need around food assistance. That is absolutely critical, and I am pleased we have stood together in opposing very damaging amendments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Because just as crop insurance is important for our farmers when they have a disaster, food assistance is important for our families when they have a disaster. I think it reflects the best about us as Americans that we want to make sure we are providing that assistance.
We also are making sure we are doing more around farmers markets, and fresh fruits and vegetables in schools, making local food hubs a possibility so we have local farmers being able to come together to market their products as well.
There are many pieces in this farm bill that all relate back to jobs, all relate back to reforms we have put in place, and relate to making sure we have a continuation of the safest, most affordable food supply in the world here in America. When you go home tonight, if you sit down to have supper, thank a farmer. We all understand this is the riskiest business in the world, and the job of the farm bill is to provide support and risk management tools for our growers when they need them, but also to be great stewards of taxpayer dollars and to do what is right for rural communities across America and for families that need some temporary help as well.
There are many pieces, and I haven't even mentioned all of them. But I did want to remind people why we take the time on the floor to work through these issues and these amendments. We have more work to do, but we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We will be putting together a list for final votes on amendments when we come back into session, and we are looking forward to doing that and to completing this effort.
Again, I would remind colleagues, we did this last year. The House did not do their job. They did in committee, on a bipartisan basis, but not on the floor. We did our job. Last time around I remember doing 73 different votes on this particular bill. We wrapped in almost every single one of those amendments that were passed into the bill we presented to the Senate this time, and we are continuing to work together on other amendments as well. But it will be time, when we get back, to bring this to closure and to once again demonstrate the Senate can work together on a bipartisan basis to do the right thing for the families and the businesses and the farmers and the ranchers we represent. Sixteen million people in this country are counting on us to get our job done, and I am sure we will.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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