Farm, Ranch, Equity, Stewardship, and Health Act of 2007

Madam President, may I ask that I be notified when I have 5 minutes remaining?

First, I would like to congratulate the Senator from New Hampshire for his, as usual, eloquent remarks, but I would like to congratulate him especially.

I believe I am recognized for up to 30 minutes?

Madam President, I congratulate the Senator from New Hampshire. He is usually eloquent, and he was again today. But the subject matter is not just eloquent, it is critical in the State of Tennessee.

There is a medical liability crisis, especially for women who live in rural areas. The fact is, as the Senator from New Hampshire has said, women who live in rural areas do not have access to doctors for prenatal health care. They do not have access to doctors to deliver their babies.

According to data from the Health Services and Resources Administration, in 2004, in 45 of Tennessee's 95 counties, pregnant mothers had to drive for miles to get prenatal care or to deliver their babies. In 15 of those counties, pregnant mothers have no access whatsoever to any prenatal health care within their counties.

The Tennessean newspaper, on July 20, 2004, reported that only 1 of 104 medical students graduating from Vanderbilt University Medical School chose OB/GYN.

Dr. Frank Boehm said that:

We must not lose sight of the fact that one of the side

effects of our current medical malpractice crisis in OB/GYN

is the steady loss of medical students who are choosing not

to practice one of our most important medical specialties. If

the decline continues, patients having babies or needing

high-risk care will be faced with access problems this

country has not yet seen. The same story is true at the

University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis.

On any given day, there are more than 125,000 medical liability suits in progress against America's 700,000 doctors.

There is a way to fix this. The State of Texas has shown us how, and it is similar to the way Senator Gregg has suggested. Put a reasonable cap on punitive damages, but let there be unlimited liability for any real damages. That was done in Texas in the year 2005, and in the following year, last year, more than 4,000 doctors applied for licenses to practice in Texas. OB/GYNs and other doctors are pouring back into Texas--up 34 percent from the previous year--because of a change just like the one the Senator from New Hampshire has suggested.

I am happy for Texas, but I would like Tennessee and the rest of the country to experience the same thing. Senator Gregg is exactly right to point out the medical crisis that is caused when women who live in rural counties cannot have access to prenatal health care and care for their pregnancy and for their babies.

Amendments Nos. 3551 And 3553

Madam President, I rise to speak in support of amendments Nos. 3551 and 3553, which were previously offered on my behalf.

The first amendment is No. 3551. This is an amendment which would add $74 million to the last 3 years of the farm bill for agricultural research at land grant colleges or universities. Specifically, it would provide mandatory funding for the Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems as follows: $24 million in fiscal year 2010, $25 million in 2011, and $25 million in 2012. It would be fully offset by striking section 12302 of the tax title in the Harkin substitute amendment to the farm bill, which basically says that taxpayers in Georgia and in Tennessee, for example, will pay for transmission lines for ratepayers in North Dakota and South Dakota and in other States who want to build transmission lines through rural areas, primarily for wind energy.

I am here today to talk primarily about farm incomes, and I am talking about America's secret weapons for farm incomes in the day in which we live, which are the land grant universities of America. Iowa State is a great

land grant university. I imagine the University of Minnesota is a great land grant university in Minnesota. I know I was president of the University of Tennessee, which is our land grant university, and I confess to some bias because I think I am the only former president of a land grant university in the Senate.

Why is that so important? Earlier this year, we unanimously passed, after 2 years of work, a bill we called the America COMPETES Act. What it did was recognize America's brainpower advantage is what has given us our incredibly high standard of living.

In this last year, our country, the United States of America, produced about 30 percent of all the wealth in the world for about 5 percent of the people in the world--that is, our population. How did we do that? There are a variety of reasons, but primarily, since World War II, we have taken our brainpower advantage to create new jobs that have given us that great high standard of living. This amendment is about making sure we take advantage of that in the agriculture community. It will provide more competitive grants to our land grant universities so they can create value-added agricultural products, of which I have an example right back here.

Congress recognized the importance of this brainpower advantage our land grant universities have when it authorized the 1998 farm bill. It created something called the Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems. In addition to farm income, this research was to be for future food production for environmental quality, for natural resource management, as well as, as I said, farm income.

Here is a specific example of the value-added opportunity I am talking about. There is a weed, I guess people would call it, called the guayule weed that grows out in the Southwest. Research that was done at the University of Arizona led to the development of a non- allergenic rubber product that is made from that plant that is as useful as latex rubber, for example, for gloves that we use with which to work. But it does not cause allergic reactions, as latex does, in 10 percent of our Nation's health care workforce. That is an example of the brain power advantage.

The University of New Mexico and the University of Tennessee are taking opportunities to use manure as sources of energy and as ways to create nursery crop containers. At Texas Tech University, the research that has come directly from the program I described that was started in 1998 has led to the development of a less toxic version of the castor seed created by using genetic modifications. This means we can grow more castor oil in this country instead of having to import it.

Now, one might say: Well, what is the big deal about castor oil? It tastes bad. It is what you take when you are sick. Not anymore. On the Defense Department's Critical Needs List there are multiple uses of castor oil for military purposes, including lubricants, adhesives, pharmaceuticals, waxes and polishes and inks.

The Senator from Georgia and from Iowa will know very well the value- added advantage to our country of all the products that have come from soybeans. Our great land grant universities have led the way to create these extra farm incomes, these new jobs for our country.

There are 76 land grant universities in America. During the 2 years where this program that was passed in 1998 worked well, 2001 and 2002, this grant program I am describing awarded 183 different grants, one grant at least in every State and in the District of Columbia.

So these land grant universities, created in Abraham Lincoln's administration, have been at the forefront of our agriculture in America for a long time. If we want to keep high farm income, they are a major part of our ability to do that.

We have had some experience now since 1998 with this grant program I am describing, which has a long name, called the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems. First, when it was appropriated, and the Senator from Georgia mentioned this to me, the appropriators got to the money and they canceled the appropriation and then increased another account and earmarked the money for their favorite university.

That practice stopped in 2001 and 2002. Basically, we went through a period where the research grants were awarded in the way they are supposed to be, the way most of our research grants are awarded. One reason our great higher education system works so well is because it is a large marketplace; students may choose their school, Government money follows them to the institution of their choice, public, private, nonprofit, and the billions of dollars we spend on research to create jobs, giving us the brain-power advantage, is competitively awarded, usually peer reviewed.

So in a couple years, that worked for this program. But then, the authorizers looked at what the appropriators had done and they said, in effect: We are going to earmark some of this money to our favorite universities. That happened for a while.

Then, in 2005, we got into a budget crunch, and those trying to balance the budget said: Here is a place to get some money. They took the money that was dedicated for agriculture research and used it for the 2005 budget reconciliation. So only in 2 years since 1998 has this excellent competitive grant program worked very well, 2001 and 2002.

Now, in the current House version of the farm bill we are debating today, they try to put it back on track. In the first 2 years of the bill, they appropriate the money to deal with the budget deficit that was dealt with in 2005. But in the last 3 years, they authorize money for this kind of research, $200 million in each of 2010, 2011, 2012, $600 million, amounts to about two-tenths of 1 percent of the total cost of the House version of the farm bill.

The Senate version, unfortunately, well, fortunately in the first 2 years, does pay the money to deal with the budget problem. The decision was made a few years ago. But in the last 3 years, during the time when the House put in 600 million, the Senate puts in zero.

So my amendment would restore $74 million of the $600 million, and in conference, hopefully, the conferees could decide this is an important provision. Since both Houses had provided money, we can put the program back on track.

How do we pay for it? Well, by striking section 12302 from the tax title. Now, section 12302 of the tax title provides new tax breaks for large transmission towers that transmit electricity, primarily from wind farms, in remote and rural areas.

In my part of the country, Tennessee, for example, wind farms barely work at all because the wind does not blow. But where they do work a little bit is up on top of some of our most scenic mountains. So what the effect of this provision would be is to say: We are going to give people who own the land an ability not to pay income tax on the income they get from running these big transmission towers from the top of our scenic mountains all the way down to where the electric grid is.

That is unnecessary in the first place because the provision, as written, is retroactive. In addition to applying to future deals that will be made with landowners, it seems to apply to current and existing deals.

No. 2, it provides tens of millions of dollars, about $55 million, in my computation, of new subsidy for wind. Wind already is, in my judgment and in the judgment of many others, over-subsidized in terms of an energy source.

Third, and perhaps the largest objection, is transmission towers should be paid for by the utilities that build the transmission towers. If the Tennessee Valley Authority builds a transmission tower for whatever purpose, those of us who buy our electricity from TVA ought to pay the bill. We should not send the bill to the Colorado taxpayer or to someone who lives in southern Georgia or someone who lives in Iowa or New York, and neither should they send their bills to us.

So I think it is inappropriate for all those reasons, to subsidize further the ability to build transmission lines, primarily from wind farms to the grid. What it tends to do is to create such extravagant subsidies for wind that investors see an opportunity to make a lot of money, and they build wind farms in places where the wind does not blow.

That might sound to some like a ridiculous statement. But we have one of those in the Southeastern United States. It happens to be in east Tennessee. It is a TVA experimental farm.

It is up on top of Buffalo Mountain, 3,500 feet up. It ought to be a particularly good place for it. You can see the big white towers and flashing lights, instead of seeing the mountain tops, which we prefer to see.

What does it do? Not much. It cost $60 million over 20 years to TVA ratepayers to pay somebody to provide this energy. But during August, when we were in a drought and we needed to turn our air-conditioning on, it was operating 10 or 15 percent of the time.

So there is a much better solution to the need for new electricity in our part of the world and in many parts of America than to encourage investors through extravagant subsidies to build huge transmission lines through rural areas to connect wind farms with grids that are a long distance away.

If the market supports that sort of electricity investment, let it support it. That will usually mean, if you are going to build big wind farms, you will build them fairly close to the electric grid so you will not have to spend a million dollars a mile on the transmission line.

That is the first amendment. We would take the $74 million from this unnecessary expenditure that causes people to pay, in one part of the country, for what should be an electric ratepayer's bill in another part of the country; gives an unnecessary amount of money to wind developers. It, in fact, takes an example of wasteful Washington spending and uses it for higher farm incomes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Chairman Harkin from organizations stating their support for increased funding for research at land-grant universities.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Please let me know when there are 5 minutes remaining.

Amendment No. 3553

Here is my second amendment. It is amendment No. 3553. I say it with all due respect to the Senator from Colorado because he and I discussed this. I am sure he will have more to say about this. But here is what this amendment is about.

The question is whether every Member of this body--I hope a lot of Senators are watching or their staffs are watching, because you do want to help your Senator if you are a staff member go home and explain, wherever you may live in America, why you took $4,000 of their tax money and gave it to their neighbor to build a 12-story tower in that neighbor's front yard with a flashing red light on top.

That is the question. The farm bill tax title, as reported by the Senate Finance Committee, says it is called a small wind tax credit. Now, I would ask those who can see this picture whether they would consider this tower an example of a small wind turbine? I think you can see the large crane next to it. You can see the telephone pole by it. Imagine if that is in your neighborhood, in the front yard of your neighbor. What the proposal in the tax title as reported says, that a small wind tax credit would give you up to $4,000 toward building a turbine of up to 100 kilowatts. That is a 100-kilowatt wind turbine.

Now, you might build a smaller one, and the cost would vary--a 0.5 kilowatt turbine might cost about $1,900 and receive a $570 tax credit, which is 30 percent of the total cost. A 1 kilowatt turbine might cost about $4,000 and receive a $1,200 credit, which is also 30 percent of this turbine's cost. A 2.5 kilowatt turbine costs about $15,000 and would receive a $4,000 credit, which is 27 percent of the turbine's cost. But you could build one as big as the 100 kilowatt turbine depicted here with taxpayer funds under the provisions of this bill.

I would like to ask my colleagues to think about whether they think that is an appropriate use of tax money. My view is the puny amount of electricity produced by these wind turbines is not worth ruining the character of our neighborhoods.

So what my amendment would do is simply say: This is a farm bill. If the Members of this body and this Congress want to subsidize the building of 12-story white towers in rural areas for farms and businesses, then do that in the farm bill. But do not allow that to go into residential neighborhoods across America, which the bill, as presently written, does.

Now, when I say a puny amount of electricity, what do I mean by that? Well, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which has examined this provision of the proposed farm bill, it would encourage the installation of 12 megawatts of electricity.

Electrical generators have something called rated capacity. The rated capacity is the power that an electrical plant generates when operating at its full capacity. A nuclear power plant, for example, in Tennessee on average operates at 90 to 95 percent of rated capacity. That is why so many Americans are beginning to understand that nuclear power is the way you deal with climate change, if you are serious about it, because they produce 1,100 or 1,200 megawatts of power 92 percent percent of the time, and that is clean power. That has no nitrogen, no sulfur, no mercury. It has no carbon. Nuclear power produces 20 percent of our electricity and 80 percent of our carbon-free electricity.

The idea here is that by putting 12-story towers or up to 12-story towers in our neighbor's front yard or in our front yard, we could produce under this proposal an estimated 12 Megawatts of electricity. Probably turbines like that would operate 20, 25, 30 percent of the time. So it wouldn't be 12 megawatts of electricity, it would be 3 or 4 mega- watts on average. This is equivalent to two-tenths of 1 percent of the energy from a nuclear reactor or six-tenths of 1 percent of the energy from a single coal plant.

My appeal is that we respectfully use our common sense as we think about how to deal with the various challenges we have with clean air, with climate change, with our need for energy. Common sense does not say we ought to subsidize the building of 12-story towers or up to 12- story towers in our front yards. For example, we would get a much better bang for the buck--$5 million is what is estimated to be spent-- if we simply bought energy-efficient light bulbs and gave them to our neighbors. Spending $5 million on $2 energy-efficient light bulbs would save eight times the electricity generated by these ``small wind turbines.'' So why should we ruin the character of our neighborhoods when we could do eight times as much good with the same amount of money by changing our light bulbs? That would be common sense.

I am very much aware of the concern about climate change. Ever since I have been a Member of this body, I have had legislation in the Senate--first with Senator Carper, then with Senator Lieberman--to establish caps on utilities which produce a third of all the carbon in the country. That legislation, which I introduced with those two Senators over the last 5 years, also would establish more aggressive standards for nitrogen, mercury, and sulfur than the administration does. In addition, last week when we were debating climate change, the Environment Committee adopted my proposal for a low-carbon fuel standard which would be one of the most effective ways, probably the most effective way, to reduce quickly the amount of carbon in the fuel we use. In the last Congress, I was the principal sponsor of the solar energy tax credit. So I, like most Americans, am looking for ways for us to continue to power our huge economy but to do it in a clean way. I make a plea for common sense while we do this.

I suppose it would be possible for us to give $4,000 to a homeowner and say: Build a big bonfire in your backyard, and then we will give you more money to sequester the carbon and bury it under the ground. That would be possible. But would it make common sense? No, it wouldn't make common sense. There are better ways to use the money. Why would we destroy the environment to save the environment, which is precisely what we are doing in residential neighborhoods with this proposal. I regret not that it allows farm families and farm businesses a small subsidy to build large wind turbines. I regret that we would extend that to residential neighborhoods at the same time.

Let me say something else about the number of subsidies for wind power that exist today in our country. Sometimes the need for wind has become nearly a religion. Instead of looking carefully at whether we should use more efficient light bulbs or smart meters on utilities or solar panels or efficient appliances or green buildings, a whole variety of things we can do as a country to be green--instead of doing that, I think we have gone overboard on the idea of wind.

Let me give a couple of examples of that, if I may. There are a great many subsidies already in existence for wind. The biggest, of course, is the renewable electricity production tax credit. Through that renewable production tax credit, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the United States taxpayer will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years. Let me say that again. The United States taxpayer is committed, through the existing renewable electricity production tax credit, to spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years. That doesn't count the value of various other Federal, State, and local subsidies for wind. There are the clean renewable energy bonds to help build the wind turbines. There are Department of Energy grants and incentive programs. There are Department of Agriculture renewable energy and energy efficiency grants and loans. There are various State subsidies for wind.

Texas is appropriating billions of dollars for transmission lines for wind. That is their decision. It is not as if this were a form of energy which lacked support. I am afraid the result is that the extravagant subsidies for wind are causing people to build wind farms and to use wind where they otherwise would not. In testimony before the Environmental and Public Works Committee recently, one utility manager from Oklahoma said he is tripling the amount of wind they are using.

I said: Why are you doing that? Can you use it as baseload power; that is, can you use it as reliable power all day long?

He said: We can only use it when the wind blows.

I said: Can you use it for peaking power?

He said: No, we can't use it for that because the peaking power, the busiest time of the day or year, might come when the wind is not blowing.

I said: Why are you doing it then?

He said: To make the legislators happy.

So we are not letting the market decide. We have become obsessed with the idea that this needs to be done. How big is that obsession? I think most Senators would be surprised to learn that by fiscal year 2009, the renewable electricity production tax credit will be the single largest tax expenditure for energy: $1.9 billion of that in 2009 would go for all renewable sources, but $1.3 billion would be for wind. We hear a lot about oil and gas and the subsidies for oil and gas. One might think that would be true since we have this massive economy. We use about 25 percent of all the oil and gas in the world. But according to figures from the Joint Tax Committee--and perhaps somebody will point out that the Joint Tax Committee is wrong, but this is what they say in the year 2009, the subsidies for oil and gas tax expenditures will be $2.7 billion from the taxpayers. The production tax credit for wind will be $1.3 billion. Wind, $1.3 billion; oil and gas, $2.7 billion. The reason I mention that is because of the disproportionate relationship between the value of oil and gas to an economy that uses 25 percent of all of it in the world and the amount of electricity produced by wind.

In 2006, wind energy produced seven-tenths of 1 percent of the electricity we consumed in the United States, yet it is the largest single energy tax expenditure by the taxpayer. Something is wrong there. The Energy Information Administration estimates that by the year 2020, after we have spent presumably tens of billions of dollars of subsidies for large wind turbines in your front yard and backyard and side yard and our national forests, along our beaches, our most scenic mountaintops, after we have done all of that, according to the Energy Information Administration, wind is projected to produce about 1 percent of our electricity needs.

I am skeptical of that figure. I think the Energy Information Administration is too conservative. It might be 2 percent. It might be 3 percent. Maybe it is 4 percent. But should the largest energy expenditure be to encourage the building of such towers, or should we be spending our money in different ways?

We have other ways to produce electricity: 49 percent of our electricity is produced by coal. Would it be wise to spend money in finding a way to sequester that coal, perhaps through algae, perhaps through enzymes, so we can use it to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? I think it would. But the largest single energy tax expenditure is for wind. Twenty percent of our electricity is produced by nuclear power, 80 percent of our clean power. In my view, if we are serious about climate change in this generation, climate change is an inconvenient truth, the inconvenient solution is nuclear power and conservation. But the largest single energy tax expenditure is for large wind turbines. Hydropower is clean as well. It is only about 7 percent of the electricity in the United States. It will drop a little by 2020. But wouldn't there be ways to encourage that as well?

It may be said that this is only a small matter. It is only $5 million. But

it won't be a small matter in residential neighborhoods in Knoxville and Denver and Los Angeles, all across the country, when a neighbor comes in and says: I just got $4,000 of your tax money, and I am going to put up a 12-story white tower with a blinking red light on top because I want to do what I can for climate change.

I think the proper answer is to say that is not the most commonsense thing we can do. There are many ways we can conserve. Efficient light bulbs would save eight times as much as this proposal would generate. Why don't we do that instead?

If you think this is not going to happen in your neighborhood, I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record following my remarks a story from CNN.com about neighbors in Atlanta who are already squabbling about someone who has built a wind turbine in their front yard in a historic neighborhood. It makes no difference that the wind doesn't blow very much in Atlanta. The neighbor is just making a statement. That is the kind of thing that this will encourage.

It would be my hope that this amendment would be accepted by the Senate. The effect of it would be to leave in place up to $4,000 support for building a tower that could be as large as that one, a 100 kilowatt turbine, in rural areas or for rural business. That would still be in place under my amendment. What would not be in place is the ability to use that in residential neighborhoods. The amendment would also make clear that nothing we are doing in this legislation preempts any local decision about the kind of decisions people will make. I am for caps on utilities. I am the sponsor of the solar credit. I am for cleaner air, more aggressively than the administration has been. I am ready to use smart meters. I am ready to try geothermal, almost anything, the low-carbon fuel standard. But I hope we will use common sense.

Common sense says to me, with all due respect, that we should not encourage using other people's tax money for your neighbor to build up to a 12-story white tower in his front yard as a solution to the current concern about climate change. There are other, better ways to do it, starting with energy efficiency, other ways that make much more common sense.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

Neighbors Fight, States Scramble Over Clean Power

(By Thom Patterson)

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN).--Curt Mann's neighbors are livid,

accusing him of erecting an ugly wind turbine among their

historic homes for no other reason than to show off his

environmental ``bling.''

The 49-year-old residential developer is remodeling his

1920's house to be more environmentally friendly, including

installation of a 45-foot-tall wind turbine in his front

yard. ``It's really none of their business how I spend my

money,'' Mann said.

The towering turbine, which overlooks majestic trees and

Victorian rooftops, pits preservationists in Atlanta's Grant

Park Historic District against a property owner and his

individual rights.

``It's unattractive and it's a nuisance,'' said Scott

Herzinger, whose home is three doors down. Mann ``invaded the

public view . . . when he put that tower up.''

In blustery regions, home turbines can cut power bills by

up to 80 percent. But opponents claim Mann's wind turbine

needlessly threatens neighborhood property values because

Atlanta's low winds don't produce enough speed to make the

device worthwhile.

At a cost of $15,000, Mann said the turbine will shave at

least $20 per month off his power bill--hardly a windfall. A

proposed federal tax credit would bring Mann $3,000.

Acknowledging it could be decades before his investment pays

off, Mann said, ``even if it was a 50-year payback, at least

we've done something to reduce our dependency on fossil

fuels.''

Herzinger blames Atlanta, which ``let us down miserably''

when zoning officials sided with Mann.

Said Mann, ``If regulations for historic preservation don't

address modern-day issues, then they're not very sound.''

But Herzinger, 48, who shares Mann's support for wind

power, said Mann could have considered many alternatives

which would have helped the environment more than the

turbine. ``After looking at the facts, it doesn't seem

unreasonable to think of Mann's wind turbine as eco-bling.''

Although opponents filed a lawsuit in Fulton County

Superior Court against both Atlanta and Mann, the squabble

poses larger, far-reaching questions about how communities,

states and the nation as a whole should tackle the ongoing

shift toward cleaner energy.

``I don't think we're going to revolutionize the utility

industry through wind turbines in the front yard,'' said

longtime California energy consultant Nancy Rader, ``To

really make a dent in the power sector we've got to have the

big, central, bulk-generating facilities.''

At least 21 states and the District of Columbia have set

deadlines or goals for utilities to obtain electricity from

clean renewable sources instead of fossil-fuel burning

plants.

The scramble has triggered construction of large-scale wind

farms throughout much of the nation, including proposals for

the first U.S. offshore facilities.

Delaware and Galveston, Texas, have offshore projects in

the works, although a farm proposed off New York's Long

Island was shelved this year due to high projected

construction costs.

Top New York energy official Paul Tonko said the push

toward renewable energy became more urgent as oil prices hit

a record $80 a barrel September 13.

``We have precious little time to adjust,'' said Tonko,

president of New York State Energy Research and Development

Authority. ``We are behind the curve of several leading

nations who have moved forward with very aggressive

outcomes.''

In Massachusetts, where utilities are under the gun to

obtain four percent of electricity from renewables by 2009,

builders await federal approval of a hugely controversial

wind farm off historic Cape Cod.

The Cape Wind project envisions 130 wind turbines each

rising 440 feet above Nantucket Sound by 2011. State

officials said the farm will eliminate pollution equal to

175,000 gas-burning cars.

Like Mann's neighbors, Cape Wind opponents are rallying to

protect historic properties. The Massachusetts historical

commission said the wind farm's ``visual elements'' would be

``out of character'' and would have an ``adverse effect'' on

more than a dozen historic sites, including the Kennedy

family residential compound in Hyannis Port.

James E. Liedell, director of Clean Power Now, a grass-

roots group that supports the project, said he once asked

Sen. Edward Kennedy, during a random encounter in 2003, what

he thought of Cape Wind. ``It's the sight of wind turbines

that bothers me,'' Liedell said Kennedy said, reminding

Liedell that, ``that's where I sail, and I don't want to see

them when I sail either.''

According to polling in northern Europe where wind farms

are flourishing, residents eventually have come to accept

turbine towers dotting the landscape, said Dr. Mike

Pasqualetti, who has done much research on the topic.

Communities near many California wind farms, which were built

in the 1980s, have largely come to accept the turbines, said

the Arizona State University professor.

As the nation's fastest growing form of new power

generation, wind-born electricity may soon fuel commutes for

millions of Americans.

``If we power electric hybrid cars with electricity that

comes from wind farms, it means you aren't polluting on

either end of the equation,'' said Dr. Robert Lang, director

of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. ``It doesn't

make sense to power electric cars with electricity from

fossil fuel burning plants.''

Governments should consider offering property owners

reduced energy rates or other incentives to win their support

for green energy projects, suggested Lang.

Washington state utilities are racing to obtain 15 percent

renewable energy by 2020--much of that from wind. When the

Kittitas County Commission unanimously rejected placing a 65-

turbine facility near residential property, Gov. Chris

Gregoire overruled the commissioners in a move that Chairman

Alan Crankovich called disappointing and unprecedented.

``To have a land-use decision overturned by the governor,

that scares me,'' Crankovich said. ``I'm concerned about it

because this is the first step in weakening local authority

and I hope she understands that.''

Bertha Morrison, 89, a lifelong resident whose property

abuts the proposed site applauded the governor's decision.

``There'll be money coming from it to the county and that

will keep our taxes down a little bit.''

Individuals such as Morrison, Mann and Herzinger can

influence public energy policy, said energy consultant Rader,

by participating in local government and casting votes on

statewide initiatives.

``We're going to have to bite the bullet,'' said Rader. ``I

think we need to do every damn thing we can to save this

planet and everybody on it.''

Mr. President, I seek recognition under the unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. President, I come today to speak in general about the farm bill, which we are debating, more correctly called the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007, and also to speak about some of the amendments proposed to it.

This is an essential piece of legislation. I am proud to have been part of both committees that have brought separate parts of this legislation forward and to have been able to work together in a bipartisan fashion to craft a bill in the Senate I believe very effectively addresses the food and fiber needs of our Nation as we move forward.

This legislation impacts the lives of families across this Nation and around the world through providing food security, enabling global competitiveness, and ensuring a better environment. I have been pleased to work with my colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, and others in Congress to craft a bill that builds upon previous farm bills for a stronger Federal farm policy.

The legislation includes essential provisions, such as the new specialty crops subtitle that strengthens the specialty crop block grant and other important programs. I thank Senator Stabenow, Senator Craig, and others for working with me on this effort. I also thank the committee for its commitment to helping us be sure that these new specialty crop provisions have been included in the legislation. There has been confusion because, although we have included specialty crops in the legislation this year, they have not been included as a commodity crop, in those crops that are covered by the commodity programs. Instead, they are included in ways that will help them to obtain better technical assistance and grant programs so they can facilitate and enhance their development, the growing of these crops, and the marketing of them; but they don't technically, under this bill or in any way, participate in the commodity programs.

I also thank Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley on the Finance Committee for helping to craft a tax title for the farm bill that, in addition to its many other strong provisions, includes improvements to the Endangered Species Act, through tax incentives for landowners, to help them with species recovery. This is a piece of legislation Senators Baucus and Grassley have agreed to cosponsor with me, as well as many other Senators, both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. It is one we have worked on for years to try to find a bipartisan path forward, where those who are concerned about the preservation and recovery of species, as well as those who are concerned about the impacts of our efforts on private property owners, can come together with a proposal that will help us to facilitate the recovery of endangered species.

One little-known fact is approximately 80 percent of the threatened or endangered species in the United States are located on private property. It is critical we bring forward the assistance of private property owners and incentivize their involvement in the recovery of these threatened and endangered species. That is what this legislation will do.

I wish to take some time to talk more about other important aspects of the farm bill and some changes being proposed. In order to do so, I wish to explain what many people don't understand when we talk about the farm bill. We discuss the farm bill as though it were a bill that focused on production agriculture, and certainly it does.

The commodity title I referenced and the conservation title I will reference in a minute both focus closely on production agriculture but not solely on it. What goes unnoticed in these debates is the farm bill is a very broad bill that deals with a multitude of critical issues in our Nation relating to the production of food and fiber. It has 11 titles--titles on commodities and conservation, as I have indicated; titles on trade, nutrition, rural development, credit, research, forestry, energy, livestock, and other miscellaneous provisions.

One other little known or little focused on fact relating to the farm bill is the commodity title, which we most often talk about, represents only 14 percent of the funding allocated in the bill. The conservation title, which is another one of those we talk about a lot, only represents about 9 percent of the funding in the bill. The nutrition portion of the farm bill includes almost two-thirds--in fact, a little over two-thirds of the funding in the bill, 67.2 percent, is allocated to the nutrition program. I will talk about those as well as I go forward.

My point is this is a very broad-based bill. It is one that impacts rural and urban areas. It deals with the importance of food and fiber in many different contexts, from feeding a nation and clothing a nation to engaging in international trade, to our security as a nation, and to many other aspects of our lives. As I said earlier, it literally impacts people not only throughout this country but throughout the world.

Let me move on and talk about a couple of those titles. The first one I will go to is the commodity program and the commodity title.

I am concerned with efforts that have been introduced in some amendments to the bill on the floor that would lower selected loan rates, including the rates for barley, wheat, oats, wool, and honey loan rates--reduce them back down to the 2002 farm bill levels and then divert the funding saved by that reduction into the nutrition title and other titles of the bill.

I certainly understand and don't question the importance of our nutrition programs and other programs being targeted for this diverted funding. But it is important to note that under this farm bill, nutrition funding already accounts for over two-thirds of the funding in the bill, with only 14 percent allocated to commodities.

Much work has been done in this bill to try to provide adequate support for farm families across our Nation, while carefully balancing the limited funding available to each title of the bill.

Additionally, adjustments or corrections have been made to loan rates to better ensure the loan rates don't distort planting decisions. That is very critical in our World Trade Organization negotiations. Under the 2007 farm bill, we have the rates established in a way that will assist us in our global trade negotiations. Specifically, the

adjustments in the Senate bill increase the loan rates for wheat, barley, oats, and minor oilseeds to 85 percent of the Olympic average for prices between 2002 and 2006. For those who don't pay attention to what all that means, the bottom line is it is important, as we move forward in the commodity program, that we not establish programs that distort planting decisions by farmers; otherwise, we will be accused of improper subsidy or improper trade-impacting decisions and policies that will be challenged in world trade negotiation arenas.

Loan rates for crops that compete for acres must be set at similar percentages of recent market prices or they can affect production decisions when prices are expected to be near or below loan levels.

Farmers and their lenders take price support from the loan program into consideration in making planting decisions. Current loan rates under the 2002 farm bill were heavily skewed in favor of and against different crops, ranging from 69 percent to 111 percent of the Olympic average during the years 2002 through 2006. It is these variations that create planting decision distortions we need to avoid.

Efforts to strike the changes we have made and divert the funding will prolong the existing disparity in the current farm bill, a policy which has been a factor of loss of wheat, barley, oats, and minor oilseeds to increased production in other commodities.

Our producers work to feed our country and people of nations across the world, while also dealing with high levels of regulation and taxation, labor shortages, droughts, and other natural disasters and ever-increasing input costs, substantial foreign market barriers, and other factors that put them at a disadvantage in a very competitive world market.

We have to ensure our farm families have the necessary support as they continue to work to remain successful, while factoring in and facing these increased challenges.

I ask other Senators in the Chamber to stand with me in supporting this careful balance we have reached in the bill and to vote against amendments or other efforts to eliminate the loan rate rebalancing and other commodity program support.

I also wish to talk about, in the commodity title, the importance of pulse crop support.

As amendments are being considered to strike portions of the farm bill, I wish to discuss the history and importance of support for pulse crops in this farm bill.

Pulse crops are cool season legumes that can withstand the cool temperatures of the northern tier of the United States. Pulse crops are such things as dry peas, lentils, small chickpeas, and large chickpeas. These cool season, nitrogen-fixing legumes are grown across the northern tier of the United States in rotation with wheat, barley, and other minor oilseeds.

In the late 1990s, when agriculture prices for commodities struggled, bankers steered growers away from raising pulse crops because they did not have the farm program safety net provided to other crops in their rotation.

In 1999, dry pea acres dropped by 55 percent. The pulse industry responded by requesting full program crop status for pulse crops as a way to keep the nitrogen-fixing legumes in the crop rotation with other program crops. Again, as we worked with issues in the previous farm bill, this was an area that needed adjustment and attention.

In 2002, I worked with the industry and other Members of Congress to include dry peas, lentils, and small chickpeas in the 2002 farm bill. Specifically, the industry was granted a marketing assistance loan program for dry peas, lentils, and small chickpeas.

Pulse crops are very good for the environment and for the overall soil health. The citizens of our country demand that our farm programs protect the long-term sustainability of our agricultural production. These legumes generate their own nitrogen and require no processed fertilizer to produce a crop.

Pulses fix nitrogen in the soil, which supplies a 40-pound-per-acre nitrogen credit to the following crop in the rotation, such as wheat, barley, and other minor oilseeds. Pulse crops and soybeans are the only farm program crops that do not require nitrogen fertilizer.

The carbon footprint of pulses and soybeans is lower than any other farm program crop because of their ability to generate their own nitrogen.

The farm bill provides us with the opportunity to encourage our Nation's farmers to protect the long-term sustainability of our soils. Including pulse crops in farm programs provides a safety net to other program crops and, therefore, encourages crop diversity and sustainability. Once again, it is an issue of favoring one crop over another with the unintended impact on the soils of our Nation.

Stripping pulse crops out of the farm programs, as some are proposing, would encourage farmers in the northern tier to shift production to those crops with a safety net in periods of low prices. This shift in production would upset the delicate environmental balance that pulse crops provide to overall soil health and sustainability and would result in acreage loss.

I encourage my fellow Senators to oppose amendments that would strip pulse crops and support for them from the farm bill.

Let me shift for a moment to the conservation title. As the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Rural Revitalization, Conservation, and Forestry, I wish to take a few minutes to evaluate and discuss the critical importance of the conservation title.

The programs authorized through the conservation title of the farm bill provide landowners with both financial and technical assistance necessary to bring real environmental results. In fact, I have said many times that of all the legislation we consider in these Chambers year in and year out, it is the farm bill that provides the most significant protection and support of our environment than any other legislation we consider. Conservation programs are the backbone of the Federal conservation and environmental policy.

The farm bill before us provides $4.4 billion in new conservation spending. The legislation builds on current successful conservation programs and needed enhancements to make them work better for our producers. It provides $1.28 billion in new spending for a program named the Conservation Stewardship Program. Funding is provided for continuation of the Wetlands Reserve Program and the Grasslands Reserve Program.

The Wetlands Reserve Program would be provided with funds to enroll 250,000 new acres per year through 2012, and the Grasslands Reserve Program would have sufficient resources to work in a similar fashion from 2008 through 2012.

As of fiscal year 2006, more than 9,000 wetland reserve sites have been enrolled and improved on more than 1 million acres of land in the United States. There are more than 900,000 acres enrolled in the Grasslands Reserve Program, providing habitat for more than 300 migratory birds species that rely on this prairie habitat.

The Conservation Reserve Program would be maintained at its 39.2 million acres. This program has reduced cropland soil loss by about 450 million tons. It has restored 2 million acres of wetlands, protected 170,000 miles of streams, and sequestered 48 million tons of carbon dioxide through 2006.

The Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program would be continued with $85 million per year through the year 2012.

The Farmland and Ranchlands Protection Program would also be authorized at $97 million per year. Easements on nearly 2,000 farms and ranches have been enabled through this program. It is estimated that almost 384,000 acres of prime, unique, and important farmland soil on the urban fringe have been or will be permanently protected from conversion to nonagricultural uses with these easements.

These are just some of the programs that are included in the conservation title of the farm bill. I understand and share the interest of many who want to increase funding for conservation programs, and as a strong supporter and proponent of these programs, I believe we will all benefit from these investments in conservation. However, I think we should be very careful where we look to obtain these funding increases. A strong farm bill is one that carefully balances each of the items, as I have indicated before.

I have indicated that the nutrition title represents almost or little more

than two-thirds of the funding in the bill. Nutrition in our schools remains an issue of critical importance for all Americans. As a father, I understand the positive effects that good nutrition has in helping a child develop and learn throughout the course of a schoolday.

In addition, I am troubled by the fact that the percentage of overweight young Americans has more than doubled in the past 30 years. I have been a strong proponent of programs that increase access to healthy foods for our children in schools. One example is the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. The farm bill would expand this existing limited program to every State in the United States and the District of Columbia and would require that at least 100 of the chosen participating schools be located on Indian reservations.

I applaud the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee for working toward these commonsense solutions and programs to support positive steps in nutrition for our children and others across our Nation. But as I said earlier, I also must express my concerns with proposals that seek to regulate food and beverage choices in schools from the Federal level.

I am wary of Federal policies that interfere with the local autonomy of State and local schools in this matter. In addition, studies have shown that parents and educators need to work with our youth to educate them about the right choices they can make for dietary health. The best way to get a child to do something different is to tell them they cannot do it sometimes. Instead of dictating to our children, we have a responsibility to teach them about their choices and encourage them to make the right choices for themselves.

The rural development title also has much assistance for America. Throughout the farm bill debate, there has been much discussion regarding investing in rural communities across our Nation, and I am pleased to have had the opportunity today to highlight just a few of the ways in which this farm bill helps us to further invest in rural America.

One of the things we have noticed, as we have seen economic decline in rural America, is that we must build the infrastructure in our rural communities so they can have access to the increasing markets overseas and nationally. It has become apparent to me that the effect of our Federal environmental rules and regulations is also felt most heavily in small and rural communities. These communities do not have the economies of scale because of the small population for very expensive updating required for their water and wastewater systems that they must do in order to comply with Federal law. Something a large urban community could handle can literally bankrupt a smaller community seeking to comply with our clean water and safe drinking water standards. Because of that, I have fought for years to promote a program called Project Search which we established in the 2002 farm bill to provide small rural communities with financial assistance to help them comply with these regulations.

Through the changes made to Project Search's model, small, financially distressed communities in Idaho and across the Nation will now have increased and more streamlined access to Federal assistance in the early stages of water, wastewater, and waste disposal projects. This will help them keep their water clean and help them do so in a way that allows the community to avoid financial ruin.

This farm bill has also made critical reforms to the Rural Broadband Loan Program ensuring that broadband access is provided to those communities with the greatest need.

The Connect the Nation matching grant program will be added to benchmark current broadband access programs and build GIS service maps to promote greater accuracy and understanding of our Nation's broadband networks.

I am also pleased that this farm bill will reauthorize the National Rural Development Partnership.

There are many other important programs included within the rural development title that will have a major impact on our rural communities. Again, I thank my colleagues for working with us to make this part of the title effective.

There are only two more titles about which I want to talk. One is the energy title. The largest energy reserves in our Nation reside in the farmland and forests across this country. Let me say that again. The largest energy reserves in our Nation reside in our farmland and forests across this country.

In order to provide for national energy security, it has become clear that agriculture is a part of the solution. For far too long we have been dependent almost entirely on petroleum as our major source of energy in this Nation. We are far too dependent not only on petroleum but on foreign sources of petroleum. And as anyone working with a portfolio would say, we must diversify. That is why I have supported many of the provisions in this farm bill to move our Nation into more diverse forms of alternative and renewable fuels.

Let's take, for example, biomass. The stored energy in biomass worldwide amounts to approximately 50 billion tons of crude oil equivalent units every year, over five times our current energy needs.

Using 17 million tons of biomass a year for energy could produce up to 7,000 new primary jobs, displace 6.8 million tons of CO2 from natural gas-fired powerplants, and generate renewable carbon credits that might eventually be worth more than $200 million.

Through research, we can expand and harness a good part of that astronomical potential, and that is why we included biomass provisions in this bill, provisions such as the Crop Transition Program, that will stimulate production and ease transition toward perennial biomass crops. Mr. President, $172 million would be provided over 5 years for this program.

There would be competitive research grants of $75 million for biomass to bioenergy programs, focusing on increasing process efficiency and utilization of byproducts, and providing for a regional bioenergy program that is awarded competitively to land grant universities.

I also support a strong focus in this bill on biofuels. We have long recognized the value in providing homegrown fuel in the form of ethanol. It is cleaner, it is renewable, and it reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

As we move forward, it is also clear that as we approach the maximum production limits of our starch ethanol, we also need to move into cellulosic ethanol which must be a primary component of our Nation's ethanol portfolio. America's energy demand will increase 30 percent over the next 22 years, and biofuels are critical to that increase.

Finally, I wish to talk about the trade portion of our bill. As Congress moves forward in a farm bill debate, we often wonder what is the future of American agriculture. I wish to discuss one very important piece of it because it is very clear to all of us that a major part of our future in American agriculture lies beyond our borders. Agriculture production in the State of Idaho is a great example.

According to statistics from the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, if Idahoans had to consume all the farm products produced within the State, every day each resident would have to eat 52 potatoes, 240 slices of bread, 38 glasses of milk or 1.9 pounds of cheese, two quarter-pound hamburgers, two onions, and the list goes on and on. The point being, we depend on other markets for our successful agricultural programs, and trade support must be a critical part of our agricultural programs in this farm bill.

This farm bill contains a number of programs such as the Market Access Program, the Foreign Market Development Program, and the Technical Assistance Program for Specialty Crops, which I talked about earlier, to name a few.

One final point. Senator Baucus and I have offered an amendment with regard to trade with Cuba. The future success of our agricultural programs and the ability of this Nation to remain globally competitive depend on our ability to have access to markets beyond our borders. There is a huge debate in this country about whether we should continue to refuse or to limit our trade with Cuba or whether to open trade with Cuba, and I am one of those who believes we should open it.

I recognize we face in Cuba and in the Castro Government a brutal dictatorship, one in which human rights and

civil rights are not recognized or honored in any way realistically. But for us to refuse to trade with them, in my opinion, does nothing to solve that problem and does everything to reduce the opportunities of the United States to influence Cuba, both on economic levels, as well as political levels.

If we look at the economic impact on the United States, our refusal to sell our agricultural products to Cuba does not mean that Cubans cannot eat or they cannot gain these agricultural products. They simply buy them from somewhere else--Canada, Europe, or other places.

Yet if we were to open our trade with Cuba and allow more aggressive U.S. marketing of agricultural products there, a recent study by the trade commission says that exports of fresh fruits and vegetables would likely increase by $37 million to $68 million in exports; milk powder exports would more than double; processed food exports would see a $26 million increase; wheat exports would be doubled to $34 million; and exports of dry beans would increase by $9 million, up to $22 million, to give a few examples.

The point is, there are markets in Cuba for our goods which our producers need to be able to take advantage of, and we will do nothing but increase our ability to work with the people of Cuba to address the political issues they face by doing so.

If we want to have a positive impact on the people of Cuba and the pressures they face under the regime in which they live, then we should open trade, open travel, and open communication so we can take to them an opportunity to see the freedom we experience here and to experience the power of open and free markets.

That is why Senator Baucus and I have introduced this legislation, and I hope the Senators here will support this amendment to this critical bill to help the United States in this one area move forward.

When we have significant trade with a nation such as China across the Pacific Ocean, yet we will not open significant trade with a neighbor such as Cuba, 90 miles off our shore, we need to reevaluate the effectiveness of our foreign policy, not only in terms of its impact on U.S. producers but in terms of its impact on our ability to truly reach out and cause the kind of positive change in Cuba that will help them achieve the kind of political freedom and avoid the kinds of oppression and human rights pressures they now face.

I have talked about a number of the portions of the farm bill. There are other very critical portions as well. The bottom line is we have an opportunity in the Senate this month, if we will deal with the amendments that are pending, to move forward on a very critical piece of legislation, a piece of legislation that, as I indicated, deals with the food and fiber of our Nation and the ability of our people and of people globally to have a better diet, to have a better opportunity to participate in global markets, and a stronger and cleaner environment.

I hope that as we move through this process, we will not make changes to the bill that will make it worse, that instead we will simply adopt those improving proposals and then hopefully soon send on to the House this very significant and important piece of legislation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have no objection. I want to make sure we are working off the same page on amendments to be offered. I will reserve the right to object to make sure we are on the same page.

Madam President, I would be happy to do that approach. In talking to the Senator from Michigan, who has an interest in the asparagus program, if this is not a convenient time for her, I will substitute the amendment on the emergency funding, which is No. 3822, for the asparagus one, No. 3672, unless the Senator is ready to go.

Reserving the right to object, I suggest I be recognized to offer those three amendments and set a time limit at the convenience of the managers. I am agreeable to a time limit. I can proceed to offer them and my colleagues can work out the time agreements.

Reserving the right to object, I am wondering, does this mean we are not going to have votes on the amendments I am offering?

No, but is it the understanding that at some point, we are going to get to votes on the 5 amendments that are part of the original 20 amendments that were agreed to?

Madam President, I rise to speak about amendments which I have pending to the agriculture bill. I hoped they would be voted on today. I guess there is a fundraiser this evening on the Democratic side of the aisle which allows us to not have any more

votes. Certainly, I hope most will be voted on tomorrow.

There are five amendments which I have proposed to the bill to try to make it a better bill, although it is a bill that has very serious problems. Let me talk about that quickly.

This agriculture bill comes forward every 5 years. It is a reauthorization of the farm programs. The practical effect is every year consumers get sort of taken to the woodshed behind the barn and get fleeced. This is no change from that historic activity under the farm bill. Only this time the fleecing is happening by the use of jiggling numbers and gamesmanship of numbers.

There is $34 billion of spending in this bill which is done through gimmicks--gimmicks to avoid what is euphemistically called pay-go around here, gimmicks to avoid budget points of order, gimmicks to make this bill cost less than it actually costs--$34 billion, with date changes and things such as that.

Then there is another game that is played, which is money which has historically been spent by direct mandatory spending is taken from the mandatory spending accounts and moved over to the tax accounts. Basically, in the conservation area, where we used to have, I think, $5 billion or $3 billion of mandatory accounts spending, we now have $5 billion or $3 billion of what is known as tax credits.

What is the practical effect of that? What it does by moving that spending over to the tax side is you free up that amount of money on the spending side, on the mandatory side to be spent, with the practical implication that the bill jumps in its cost by that amount of money. So you have a fairly significant increase by doing that. In the end, that adds to the deficit, of course, because you have ended up increasing spending by that amount of money.

In addition, the bill adds a large number of new programmatic activities through the subsidy realm. We already subsidize a lot of farm products around here in a questionable way. Sugar is a good example of that. We basically subsidize sugar so that the price of sugar in this country is about 75 percent higher than it is on the world market. That has an effect not only on the cost of sugar but it also has an effect on things such as the production of ethanol, because ethanol can be produced from sugarcane.

In addition, we subsidize all sorts of different commodities. As we know, the farm bill is the classic example of what you learned in school called log rolling. That is where you say, if you will vote for my subsidy, I will vote for yours, and down the road we go. You vote for wheat, I will vote for corn, corn will vote for soybeans, soybeans will vote for peanuts, peanuts will vote for cotton, and so forth and so on. So although none of these subsidies could stand on their own, when they get in this sequential support effort, they build a very solid wall of support for a lot of programs which are of questionable need, and certainly of questionable value when you look at a market economy, and we are supposedly a market economy. Of course, in the farm area we are not a market economy, we are a throwback to a commissar economy.

Well, in this bill they add a number of new programs. They add an asparagus payment, they add a chickpea payment, they add a camellia subsidy, and they create new programs in the area of a national sheep and goat industry. They create a new program to look at the stress farmers are under. So they add a panoply of new programmatic activity in this bill, most of which is of questionable value, but it obviously has some interest group which promoted it and, therefore, it gets put in the bill.

What I have done is I have lined up five amendments here which I think are fairly reasonable and address a number of issues--policywise big issues, and from a farm standpoint some of them address fairly narrow and concise issues.

The first amendment which I have offered--which has been offered on my behalf by Senator Thune, but which I will call up and ask for a vote on as soon as we can get to it, as soon as we can get people to give us votes around here--is the mortgage forgiveness amendment. What we are seeing in America today, whether it is in farm America, rural America, or in urban America, is obviously a huge meltdown in the subprime lending markets. The effect of that meltdown is that many people are finding their mortgages foreclosed on, which is obviously an extremely traumatic event, to have your house taken in a mortgage foreclosure. I can't think of too many more traumatic physical events than that. Obviously, there are more traumatic health events, but not too many more physical events or economic events.

Well, when you have a mortgage foreclosed on, you have a second totally incomprehensible event. The IRS assesses you a tax on the amount of the money which you owed to the bank, or to the lender, which you couldn't repay and which was wiped out in the foreclosure.

For example, if you have an obligation to a bank of $150,000 and your home is foreclosed on, and it is sold for something that recovers $100,000 of that, then that $50,000 difference becomes personal income to you and the IRS sends you a tax bill for it, even though you got foreclosed on. Well, can you think of anything worse than that? I can't, from the standpoint of economics happening on a daily basis--a person loses their home and then the IRS collection agents come by and say you owe us X number of dollars because your home was foreclosed on.

Well, this amendment would put an end to that. It would say that will not be deemed income to the taxpayer, so that a taxpayer whose home is foreclosed on does not receive the double whammy of having a tax bill sent to them. It seems pretty reasonable to me. I can't imagine anybody is going to oppose this amendment. I would hope it would get a very large vote. It is not subject to a point of order, because the cost of it is within what is left on the pay-go scorecard, to the extent there is anything left on the pay-go scorecard, it having been shredded. But Senator Conrad said last week there was $670 million left on the pay-go scorecard, which my staff confirms, as ranking member of the Budget Committee, and this amendment costs less than that. So it is in order, and I hope it will be supported. I think it is only the fair and right thing to do. I mean, this is a quirk of tax policy which, unfortunately, if you are caught in it as a citizen of America it is not a quirk, it is a devastation, and it is not right. Nobody, because their home gets foreclosed on, should suddenly get a tax bill for the amount the bank didn't recover from the home they sold.

The second amendment I am going to call up, and hope I can call it up very soon and get a vote on it, is already pending, and it is what I call the ``baby doctors for farm families'' amendment. Today, in rural America, there is a crisis in the area of health care. There are a lot of problems in health care across this country, but especially in rural America there is a significant crisis. The crisis is this: If you are a woman of childbearing age, or a woman, period, you are going to have a lot of trouble finding an OB-GYN. Why is that? Because baby doctors are being sued out of existence in rural America. As a result of the avariciousness of the trial lawyers in this country, and their constant attack especially on the practice of obstetrics and delivering babies, it is virtually impossible, it is extremely difficult for OB-GYNs to practice in rural communities, whether they are farm communities or rural communities.

Why is that? Because the base of practice, the number of people they can see, the number of babies they deliver never creates enough revenue to simply pay the cost of their malpractice insurance. And it is a crisis.

If you are a woman in a farm community and you have to drive 2, 3, 4 hours to see a doctor when you are having a baby, that can be a serious problem, obviously. It can be a serious problem on the face of it, but it is especially a serious problem in a place such as New Hampshire, where you are probably driving in a snowstorm or sleet or something else that is not very easy to drive in, and you shouldn't have to go that sort of distance.

We have suggested that simply in the area of baby doctors in rural America that we put in place something to support the women in those communities and make sure they have proper access to those doctors. Essentially, we are following the Texas and the California

proposal, where we limit pain and suffering liability in a manner which allows these doctors to have affordable malpractice premiums. It doesn't mean somebody who gets injured doesn't get recovery. They do. They get full and total recovery in the area of economics. They get significant recovery in the area of pain and suffering. But what we do not have are these explosively large verdicts which essentially make it impossible for someone to pay the cost of the premium to support an obstetrics practice in a rural area.

This proposal, which is very narrow and very reasonable, will serve a very large need in our country. It is to make sure that women get proper health care, and especially during their childbearing years, in rural America. Again, I can't imagine this being opposed, but actually this one is being opposed aggressively by the trial lawyer lobby. They are opposed to anything that limits their income in any way, even when it is something as reasonable as saying in an area where we have a clearly underserved population, which is rural America and doctors serving women in rural America, doctors who deliver babies. They are going to stop any sort of reform that tries to make it possible to improve that situation.

We know this reform works. Why do we know it works? Because Texas has tried it. The language here mirrors Texas. Texas tried it, and what Texas has seen during this period when they put in this law is a huge influx of doctors who deliver children, who are baby doctors. So there is a track record. This isn't some sort of theoretical exercise. We know in practice that this works. I know if it were in place, it would give a lot of women in this country the comfort of knowing they were going to have a decent doctor, or any doctor--it would be a decent doctor, obviously--to care for them as they decide to have children.

I hope we can get to this amendment. But again, I am interested in the fact that this amendment is being stonewalled by the other side of the aisle. They are telling me, well, we can't vote on this amendment. Why? Because we have a fundraiser tonight. I wonder who is at that fundraiser, by the way? There wouldn't be any trial lawyers there. We can't vote on this amendment because we don't have our people here. Well, there ought to be enough votes to take care of women in this country so you wouldn't have to have extra people here to defeat a proposal which is fairly reasonable and which tracks a major State's decision and which has been proven to work when it comes to caring for women who want to have children. It is very narrow. Again, it only applies to rural communities, only applies to doctors who deliver babies in rural communities, only gives women an opportunity to get decent health care.

I have another amendment which I hope to call up, which I would like to have voted on fairly soon. And by the way, I am agreeable to voting on all these tonight. I am agreeable to a half-hour timeframe. I am agreeable to voting them all tomorrow. So I am not holding this bill up. I am offering these amendments. They are pending and they are ready to go.

Another amendment I have says this new program of creating a farmers stress network should not be created. This is more of a statement. I mean how many new programs can we create in this bill? This is an unauthorized program. It is not funded. But I suspect it will be appropriated before we get too far down the road. But why do we need a stress program for farmers? Granted, farmers are under stress. I used to work on a farm, so I understand that farming is a stressful activity. But running a shoe store during an economic downturn is a stressful activity, running a restaurant is a stressful activity, running a garage is a stressful activity. There are a lot of activities in America that involve stress. Are we going to set up a stress network for every activity in America that has stress? And are we going to expect the Federal Government to fund it? Yeah.

My goodness, think of what we would have to do for our wonderful staff here. My goodness, we would have to have such a program it would be incredible, because we really give them a lot of stress. The simple fact is, you can't keep throwing these programs out there because they make good press releases. There are 51 new programs in this bill. Let us at least pick one of them that is so far off the ranch when it comes to being anything rational that the American taxpayer should have to pay for and say, no, we are not going to go this way. That would be a nice gesture. A gesture to the American taxpayer, I would call it. Kill the stress network.

Then I have an amendment which says the money in here for the asparagus program shouldn't be in here. I like asparagus. I have been accused of not liking asparagus, and that is why I am being bringing this forward. That is not true. I actually like asparagus. In fact, I have even grown asparagus. It is very easy to grow, after you get it cultivated. It takes 2 or 3 years to get a good asparagus bed, and you can grow a lot of asparagus, as long as you don't rototill over it. Then you kill it, which is what I did to my asparagus. But as a practical matter, there is no reason we should set up a new program for asparagus. This is going too far.

A lot is going too far in this bill, but this is another example of going too far. Now, granted, it is only $15 million, but, again, I like to think of it as a statement on behalf of the American taxpayer that we are not going to spend that money on a brandnew asparagus program.

There are some others we should also throw out. The camellia program we should throw out, the chickpea program--these are all new programs. They should go out too. But I was only allowed five amendments, and so I picked out the ones I think are most egregious and the ones I think we should make a little attempt to try to put some fiscal discipline into this bill.

Then there is one that is fairly big, which is my last amendment. There is $5 billion in this bill which is the ultimate earmark. It is $5 billion alleged to be an emergency fund for when emergencies strike farm communities. You have to understand how this works. Essentially this is a slush fund. It is a ``walking around money'' fund for about five States. It is, purely and simply, an earmark and a classic porkbarrel initiative.

We know that when we have an emergency in this country we will fund it, especially if the emergency is in farm country. We do it every year, and I believe historically it has averaged about $3.5 billion. I think that is the number. It is off the top of my head as a budgeter. I think that is the number we usually spend on emergencies in farm communities. If it is bigger than that, we spend more than that; if it is less than that, we spend less. But when you put in place a program which exists before the emergency occurs, all you are saying is: Here is a bunch of money folks, come and get it. For every big windstorm that occurs in North Dakota, somebody is going to declare an emergency and try to get reimbursed for their mailbox that got blown over because the money is sitting there. It is that simple. It really is terrible policy to put this forward. You have absolutely set a floor. You know you are going to spend every year in this account, and you know it is going to go to four or five States because that is where the claims are made.

Much better is the approach we presently use, although not perfect, I admit to that. Much better is to identify it when the emergency occurs, know what the costs were when the emergency occurred, and then pay those costs in order to reimburse the farm community which has been impacted, which is what we do. And we do it in a fairly prompt and efficient way around here whenever there is such an event.

There is one emergency out there today, and that is the price of oil. The price of oil has jumped radically. As a result, the cost of heating in this country has jumped radically. People who are of low income, in States from the northern tier especially--places such as Minnesota, New Hampshire--people of low income are in dire need of additional funds in order to meet their heating bills or else, literally, they are going to be in the cold. They are going to spend this winter, as we head into February, in serious straits. In New Hampshire, we have already seen a significant increase in the number of people applying for low-income home energy assistance. This is not going to wealthy people. This doesn't even go to middle-income people. It just marginally goes to low-income people. It really goes to people in the lowest of low

incomes, people who really need that in order to make ends meet and keep their heat on in the winter.

What I am suggesting is if we are going to declare emergencies around here and spend money, let's use the money on a real emergency, something that actually exists where people are actually feeling the pain right now, today--in the area of paying for heating for low-income families.

In addition, I have suggested that we reduce the deficit because that is a pretty big emergency, in my humble opinion, getting this deficit down. So this amendment essentially says let's take $1 billion and add it to the low-income heating assistance program and let's take the other $4 billion and reduce the deficit with it. That is a pretty practical approach. That is addressing a need that exists today and a need that is going to exist tomorrow, which is to reduce the deficit, rather than adding to the deficit and creating an emergency spending account which basically ends up being a slush fund and walking-around money for folks in four or five States that traditionally declare emergencies.

Those are the five amendments. I regret quite honestly that we cannot get an agreement to vote on all of them right now. I would be willing to say: OK, let's debate all of them for half an hour and then go to a vote, in seriatim vote them--bang, bang, bang, bang. Obviously, I have serious reservations about this bill. I think it is very bad policy in a lot of areas. But I recognize that the votes are there to pass the bill, so I am not trying to delay it in some tactical or procedural way. I am suggesting just the opposite, that we proceed to vote on issues which are important, which include making sure people whose homes are foreclosed on do not end up with the tax man showing up the next day and saying they owe money on money they didn't ever see as a result of their home being foreclosed on; making sure that women who are having children can see a doctor in a rural community, that farm families have adequate access to baby doctors; making sure that people who are very low income have enough to be able to meet the heating costs of this winter, which we know are going to be 30 percent to 40 percent higher than they were last winter; making sure that we reduce the deficit; suggesting we eliminate a couple of programs which are not that big but which are sort of examples of an underlying problem, which is that there is a lot of new programmatic activity here that probably should not be here and there are a lot of new subsidies in here that should not be in here--the asparagus program and the farmers stress network program.

Amendment No. 3673

Madam President, at this time I would like to call up amendment No. 3673. I am not calling it up for a vote because I understand it is not agreed to, but I do want to call it up and send a motion to the desk.

I am calling up the medical malpractice amendment, not for a vote but because I want to second-degree it.

Madam President, I ask for the regular order relative to amendment No. 3673.

I send an amendment to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, at this point I yield the floor.

Madam President, I wish to acknowledge the importance of the arguments that have been forwarded by my colleagues, especially those comments most recently by the distinguished ranking member of the Agriculture Committee and earlier by Senator Conrad, the Chairman of the Budget Committee and also a very valued member for a long time of the Agriculture Committee.

I think it is important in response, as the Senator from North Dakota pointed out, as he described the situation, that we have to take his common sense that farms that produce much more are likely, under the current farm legislation, to receive more in subsidy and payments of various sorts.

There have been certainly comments made on our side of the question that a disproportionate amount of money goes to a very few farmers. Senator Conrad attempted to rebut that by pointing out that these very few farmers may very well produce, in some States, the bulk of all that is produced.

So as a matter of common sense, if payments are being made, they would receive a very large share of those payments. Certainly, that logic is impeccable. The point the Lugar-Lautenberg amendment tries to bring to the floor is that leaving aside specific farmers, we are talking about the interests of all the American people, all the taxpayers who make these payments, in fact, to a very few.

We are making the point that farmers who do produce a lot of corn or wheat or soybeans or cotton are very likely to be more successful. I pointed out in my opening statement how farms have grown, how successful farmers have purchased the farms of those who were elderly or from the estates or from young people who have moved away from the States or from young people who do not have the wherewithal to buy property.

In short, what I describe is the consolidation of agriculture in America, which is a pretty strong trend and which I believe the underlying farm bill we are discussing today would accelerate. I think that would be regrettable. Therefore, the point I am making with our amendment is not to discuss whether, proportionately, subsidies go to those who are most successful and produce the most but, rather, to say we should not have these payments at all.

What we should have is a safety net for all farmers, including large and the wealthy as well as those who are not very wealthy and not very large, an underlying safety net of crop insurance based upon each county in America, so it is not a broad-gauge situation, it is a very locally specific situation, taking into consideration presumably the soil, the weather pattern, the history of crops in that particular county in America, or the farmer could choose to take the last 5 years of net farm income and have crop insurance based upon that farm history, a whole farm history, not simply of a specific crop, although the farmer would have the option under our plan of choosing a specific crop.

The farmer could choose whole farm income across the board, including a great number of items that are not now covered in these specific crop situations. The bill we are talking about now provides that insurance. It literally pays the premiums for all farmers, so in the event that in any particular area of America, by county, by State or by region, there is difficulty created by the weather or conceivably by world trade distortions, elements that are well beyond the ability of any one individual farmer's management to control, that farmer is going to receive compensation that will keep that farmer in business.

Now, furthermore, the farmer would have the option of buying additional crop insurance, as each of us as farmers now do, to cover the other 15 or 20 percent, depending upon the plan chosen, so that, in fact, you could ensure you were going to at least receive the same income as you have received over the

last 5 years, on average, or receive at least the computed predictions of what the price ought to be for soybeans or for corn.

Let me say, as a practical example, that I take our own experience on the Lugar farm indicative of how this might work. We have had a profit on our farm for the last 50 years. Every year. Now, one reason we have had those profits is because we have had crop insurance and we have bought the highest level of crop insurance that was possible. We paid premiums for it. It was not given to us. We paid money for it.

A good many farmers who are neighbors said: I do not want to put that expense into insurance. I will let the Lord provide, sort of hope it will all work out. But it does not always work out, given the weather patterns.

On our farm, in this soybean season, we had very adverse weather. We had drought during many of the weeks of the summer coming up toward harvest. Fortunately, it did not injure the crop totally. We had at least a 41-bushel yield, and we could have anticipated normally more like 51, about a 20-percent deficiency. But that is the way things move in this world. We understand that.

The antidote has been crop insurance. So if you have a productive farm operation, you are not penalized because of acts of God, literally, through the weather.

Now, that is what we are proposing for all farmers in America and covering all the crops that are associated with our amendment. I think this is a very important discrepancy.

The distinguished ranking member of the Ag Committee, Senator Chambliss, has described the current three-legged stool proposition I discussed earlier today. Direct payments. Direct payments historically on my farm, once again, we receive now under the bill that is being produced, the underlying bill, direct payments whether we have the same number of acres or even the same crops. It is a historical record from which these payments come.

Furthermore, we could, under the so-called marketing loan situation, try to game the system, trying to borrow money from the Federal Government and pay it back in lesser amounts, depending upon the crop moving upward, moving downward. We do not lose.

I would say this is not a fair system with regard either to agricultural competition or with regard to the rest of the public. The public, as a whole, wants to make certain farmers stay in business, wants to make certain small farmers have a shot at it, wants to pay at least for the insurance premiums so if there is an adverse situation, it could not be controlled, the income will come in and the farm stays alive. This is what the argument is about.

Now, let me simply indicate, as the distinguished ranking member has pointed out, 26 farm groups have endorsed the underlying bill. I have no doubt that is true. I would say there are a good number of agricultural interests deeply involved in this bill, and that has usually been the extent of the argument. Those are the groups that are heard in the hearings, are heard sometimes by Senators.

But this time we have had a different situation. I have cited that over 40 major newspapers in the United States of America have taken time in their editorial policies, and furthermore in supporting articles, to point out the deficiencies of farm legislation as it has evolved.

But this represents, I would submit, a much larger group than 26 agricultural groups or even members of our committees who believe they are advocates for specific groups in American agriculture. This time a very broad number of Americans have spoken out in a humanitarian way, as people who respect the Federal budget, as people who respect general fairness, in terms of group and Federal support for those situations.

I think that is very healthy. I hope that will be reflected in the vote we are about to have. I am convinced a large majority of constituents in every State of our Union would favor the Lugar- Lautenberg FRESH amendment if they had any idea of the argument that is being presented today. Thank goodness through our newspapers and editorials, a lot more people do have such an idea, and they are expressing themselves.

Let me make a technical point, and that is that an argument has been made that if we are so reliant, as I have pointed out, on crop insurance, that the Lugar-Lautenberg amendment will hurt crop insurance. I want to recite some specifics about the technicalities of crop insurance. For the moment, crop insurance companies are reimbursed by the Federal Government as a percentage of the cost of the policy. So as commodity prices have increased, so has the reimbursement of private companies, even though the workload has not changed. If, in fact, there is huge demand now for corn, huge demand for soybeans, the prices have gone up, in the case of soybeans, to record levels, exceeded only last in 1973. The compensation to the crop insurance people moves right along with it, without any of the risk involved changing. The GAO described this as ``a kind of windfall.'' Our amendment reduces the reimbursement to a rate that is still well above historical averages and, furthermore, we create a safety net through crop insurance programs dramatically increasing business opportunities for private crop insurance companies.

As has been cited by the distinguished Senator from Georgia, many crop insurance policies may not be available in certain counties in his State and in others, but under our amendment, crop insurance is available everywhere, every county, every State. That is a very important consideration in terms of a national safety net as opposed to a crop-specific or State-specific safety net.

The GAO has reported crop insurance underwriting profits of $2.8 billion over the last decade, three times the insurance industry average. The amendment I am offering today with Senator Lautenberg also reduces underwriting profits by requiring companies to share 30 percent of their accumulative underwriting gain back with the taxpayers, back with the Federal Government, so there is not an undisguised windfall. We have estimated this will save taxpayers more than $1.4 billion and reduce the outlays in the 10 years this bill covers.

I point this out because I think it is important to say our amendment is going to be a remarkable boon for crop insurance. It is going to be virtually universal. A lot of money is going to be made. But before we get into that, we had better change the terms of reference with regard to what taxpayers are paying for and the underwriting risks that are involved.

I point out one further argument; that is, that we have been talking about the relative merits of our amendment when it comes to conservation. We have not discussed differences with regard to research. We might have talked more about development in rural areas. I tried to make the point in an earlier statement that only about 14 percent of the people now living in rural America live on farms. Only about 1 out of 750 individuals actually does farm. The need for development in our rural counties is obvious. The population flight from so many counties is very apparent. If we are talking about rural America, we have to be talking about ways in which new jobs will come to counties in America, and that is not going to come through a normal farm bill situation, rewarding specific farmers and specific crops and not all of those. I point out that our amendment tries to focus on rural America, on the opportunities for jobs for people in county seats all over our country.

I also point out that we have tried to think through the problems of the young. We have tried to talk about resisting the trend toward consolidation of agriculture by truly providing support for the small farmers who do not receive much support. And, as has been pointed out, they don't produce as much, and they never will under the circumstances currently in American agriculture. We think it is very important that young people coming out of college have this choice and, furthermore, that families who do have a tradition of farming not be entrapped by current circumstances that are driving clearly toward much more concentrated management and ownership of American agriculture.

I would say that the reason why a farm such as we have in the Lugar family in Marion County, IN has great hopes for the future is that some great things have occurred in agricultural research. It is a small point in all of this

debate, but I touched upon this a moment ago in describing the soybean price. I could have discussed the evolution of prices of corn in the last 3 or 4 years. The fact is corn and soybeans are now being utilized for energy. The demand for these grains for energy is controversial all by itself. There are some outside of this Chamber as well as inside this body who would say there is a danger that food supplies are going to be converted into energy. Some have even theologically said this is not what God suggested. It should not be energy, it should be food. Others have suggested that the price of corn, because it is going up abnormally, some would say, to provide ethanol is driving the rest of American food costs up. Ditto for soybeans. Some even make the case that it is driving world food prices upward, that residents of very poor countries are now forced to pay more for food because of our policies of using food for fuel.

I appreciate this is an argument that will go on in many circles well beyond this one for a long time. But I also point out that the President of the United States and the leaders of both of our major political parties have for some time said this Nation is now two-thirds dependent upon foreign oil in terms of our petroleum needs. That percentage is increasing. Those sources of supply are more and more precarious and sometimes very unfriendly. The fact is, despite all of our conservation efforts, we are still using more oil each year. If we do not have a policy that even moves toward a slight bit of energy independence--not total, which I would agree is not within the cards as we now see life in our country--if we don't move at least to eliminate a portion of that vulnerability, we are going to have very severe consequences in terms of our own jobs, our competitive ability in the world, quite apart from the ability to drive our cars and heat our homes. We understand that.

I point out that the agricultural research that got ahead of the curve here has made possible huge changes in agricultural income in this year as well as in the last year, and will continue to do so, if we continue our research on cellulosic ethanol, if we continue our research on all of the ways in which agricultural food and fiber might play a role in this and then how we increase the yields. To believe that somehow because we have increased the acreage of corn this year and we are running out of land, that that is the end of the story, is to deny a fact I remember from boyhood onward. My dad was receiving about one-third as much yield out of our cornfields as we are getting now. I have seen that in the last 60 years of time. There are many who would point out that on our farm we could do a whole lot better. I am all ears for that, as are most productive farmers. In short, we are at the threshold of potential for income. Therefore, to have a debate mired in the thought that we must maintain all the subsidies and the programs that as a matter of fact have been so expensive, have brought about concentration, have led even to a loss of jobs in rural America makes no sense at all, in my judgment. We have to talk about the future.

I would say furthermore that, speaking about those abroad, 10 bishops from a church in Africa came to visit with me and I suppose with others in this body. They pointed out specifically that the cotton programs we support debilitate their hopes of coming into self-support in many very tough situations in their countries. They suggest, leaving aside the World Trade Organization criticism of the cotton program specifically and perhaps the opportunities Brazil may have to extract $4 billion out of somewhere in our economy that may be hitting other crops under the order they may receive, that we need to have reform, that the specific policies that are now a part of that program for cotton, they could apply it likewise to corn or to beans, are simply not going to work in a world that also has a humanitarian focus on feeding people, on humane results, on foreign policy that has at least some public diplomacy that works.

I agree with them. I would say to cotton farmers or to soybean farmers or corn farmers, let's make sure we do have an underlying safety net. Let's make certain there cannot be catastrophe to hit any of our groups. Let's do it by State, by county, by local circumstances, by history. Let's do it right. But it is another thing to demand, as a cotton farmer or a corn farmer or a soybean farmer, payments upfront, regardless of what happens, and likewise the ability to game the Government with regard to these marketing loans. I would say on the face of it, taxpayers generally, persons of humane quality in our country, are not going to like the looks of that kind of program. That has been the nature of our program in the farm bill that we have been experiencing and in the one that is about to continue.

I add finally the situation this year in this debate. I agree it is always oversimplified, but let me try to tell it as I saw it. In the House of Representatives, the farm groups, whether it was the 26 Senator Chambliss referenced or others, came in. They saw their Members, and they said: We want every penny, every penny of what we got in the past and more. We want those farm programs and we don't want them touched. However, the Members also began to hear from humanitarian groups, groups that wanted to feed Americans, interested in Food Stamps. Oxfam came in. People in conservation came in in numbers. People in energy research came in. And so pragmatically, the House committee said: Fine, we will do more for each one of you, a whole lot more, as a matter of fact. We are going to add to programs. And they did. So they took the whole block of the farm subsidies as they were and added on all of these additional programs. Then at the end of the trail, they said: We have a pay-go system, and so they added a tax bill offered by Representative Doggett who was outside the farm community but at the same time had an idea over in Finance as to how some money might be raised with regard to certain commercial foreign interests he saw. So you pay for it that way and ship the whole thing along, hoping that many constituencies will be pleased now and that the basic farm subsidies will not be touched, might even be enhanced.

In our situation in this body, we had an even more curious situation. The distinguished Senator from North Dakota who spoke earlier was a proponent, along with others, of a disaster relief program, a huge one. That went over to the Finance Committee, had the Finance Committee discussing the farm bill; as a matter of fact, making a huge contribution to the farm bill.

That particular disaster relief, as I can best fathom, would be run by some bureaucrats in the Treasury Department, that somehow would be signalled when there is a disaster and would send the money over by electronic means.

It is an unusual situation in which we have no idea how much this might cost, and actuarially I think the assumptions are not very sound. But it was an interesting way of meeting at least one particular objective and trying at least to find some other way of paying for it through an unusual clause in tax law.

I mention all of this because this kind of legislation is not good, is not necessary. I hope Members will, in fact, know there is a strong alternative--the FRESH Act, the Lugar-Lautenberg amendment--that they will vote for that, and they will make a sizable difference in the history of farm legislation.

I thank the Chair.

I request the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill to increase the number of full-time personnel of the Consumer Product U.S. Safety Commission assigned to duty stations at U.S. ports of entry or to inspect overseas production facilities to ensure that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has the personnel necessary to adequately address the growing problem of import safety. This bill would more than triple the current number of commission staff assigned to U.S. ports of entry, by requiring that no less than 50 full-time import inspectors be in place at the beginning of the next fiscal year. Additionally, it would expressly authorize the CPSC to send such inspectors to examine the operations at overseas factories which manufacture consumer products destined for the U.S.

This legislation is critically necessary, given that an ever- increasing number of the consumer products now sold on our shelves are manufactured in countries with appalling safety and quality control standards, such as China. Sine the year 2000, foreign imports to the U.S. have increased 67 percent by value, with imports from China nearly tripling, growing from $100 billion in 2000 to $288 billion last year. Almost 20 percent of consumer products sold in the U.S. today were made in China. Particularly troubling is that Chinese manufacturers have cornered the U.S. market on toys, with over 80 percent of all toys sold in the U.S. coming from China. Since March 2007, over 8 million pieces of these Chinese-made toys have been recalled due to lead contamination alone.

Outrageously, the number of CPSC personnel dedicated to monitoring import compliance with U.S. health and safety requirements has been slashed along with other Commission resources during the very period in which trade liberalization has allowed foreign producers greater access to our markets. With over 60 percent of CPSC staff having been cut over the past 27 years--from almost 1,000 employees in 1980 to a record low of 420 employees in 2007--there remain only 15 full-time Commission personnel assigned to inspect imports at U.S. ports. According to a September 2, 2007, New York Times article, this handful of import inspectors ``are hard pressed to find dangerous cargo before it enters the country; instead, they rely on other Federal agents, who mostly act as trademark enforcers.'' Similarly unacceptable is the fact that the CPSC lacks the staff to send a single inspector to the foreign factories making the goods that we put on our kitchen counters and in the hands of our children.

These facts unquestionably reveal, as a Consumers Union official told the Senate Committee on Finance earlier this month, that the CPSC has not kept up with the globalization of the marketplace. That is why I have proposed this bill, which would rapidly shore-up the commission's import inspection staff, who are so critical to protecting us from dangerous foreign products. I urge my colleagues to support this common-sense solution to an urgent problem.

Mr. President, I rise today with Senator Kerry to introduce the Small Business Lending Oversight and Program Performance Improvements Act of 2007. I truly appreciate Senator Kerry's leadership on small business issues and his bipartisan work with me on this bill.

Small businesses have propelled our Nation's economic growth, producing more than 50 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, GDP, and creating between 60 to 80 percent of all new jobs annually. The Small Business Administration's loan guarantee programs are a vital source of financing for many of these small start-up firms, entrepreneurs seeking working capital, and small businesses that must purchase larger office space or secure factory equipment so they can continue to expand.

At the same time, the SBA's 7(a) and 504 lending programs will not endure if careless oversight, and a lack of standards, allow scandal to tarnish the good names of these programs. The 7(a) and 504 lending programs will not survive if we cannot prove to taxpayers that the money spent to guarantee small business loans actually produces economic vitality, opportunity, and new jobs, for our Nation. Make no mistake, the only way to protect these integral programs and demonstrate their effectiveness and economic growth capacity is through the use of concrete measurements.

In order for the SBA's lending portfolios to grow and allow more small firms to secure the capital they require, the SBA must quantify both quality and performance by establishing the specific criteria it will examine and then assess changes in these factors over time. Additionally, these benchmarks must be codified and transparent so that lenders and small businesses understand what is being measured.

The problem is this: although the SBA evaluates portfolio quality, and uses these assessments to conduct lender oversight, the SBA has failed to provide participating lenders with some of the criteria or formulas the Agency uses to determine if their portfolios are sound or substandard. This lack of transparency not only hinders the SBA's lender oversight capabilities, it causes participating 7(a) and 504 lenders to be critical of the SBA's ability to accurately assess portfolio quality. Regrettably, the SBA's current oversight and portfolio quality assessment methods have not prevented recent high- profile scandals from occurring.

Currently, the SBA has roughly $60 billion in outstanding loans issued to small businesses. Yet incredulously it does not track these businesses' economic performance. While the SBA's total loan volume has increased substantially over the last 10 years, the agency has no way to show how these loans benefitted the U.S. economy. Ultimately, the SBA is unaware of how many jobs these loans have created, whether company net-sales or revenues have increased after securing capital, or how many of these companies prepay, default, or go out of business. Though the purpose of these loans is to spur economic growth, the SBA does not assess the actual economic outcomes these loans help make possible. Without these measurements, how can the SBA attest to the incredible economic lift and vitality these loans help generate?

Two recent Government Accountability Office reports, one from July of this year and one from June of 2004, recommended that the SBA improve its economic performance and portfolio quality measurements. Our bill would implement the GAO's recommendations and improve the performance measures for 7(a) and 504 loans. Among other things, the bill would require the SBA to: create standards for lenders' portfolio quality; increase the transparency of the SBA's lender oversight evaluation measures; report on borrowers' economic performance; and create a 7(a) and 504 portfolio default rate that can be compared directly to commercial lenders' default rates.

We have an obligation not only to maintain, but to strengthen and improve the SBA's key loan programs that I have heard time and again are a critical lifeline to the job generators we call small businesses. The remedies that Senator Kerry and I are proposing today are necessary for the SBA's lending programs to expand, and reach all of the small businesses that must have access to capital.

I urge my colleagues to strongly support the Small Business Lending Oversight and Program Performance Improvements Act.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that would require the Federal Communications Commission to fulfill its obligation of conducting an economic study on the impact low-power FM stations have on full-power commercial stations. The reason it is imperative the FCC perform this study is because we don't have a comprehensive understanding as to the effect that low-power FM stations have on their full-power counterparts.

When Congress imposed the three-adjacent-channel restriction on low- power licensees in 2001, we tasked the FCC with conducting two studies because we were concerned about the interference LPFM stations could cause with being too close in frequency to full-power commercial stations. The two studies were to determine the impact that the presence of a low-power channel would have with respect to interference with a nearby full-power station and the economic impact the presence of low power stations would bring to the commercial licensees. However, the FCC completed only one study--the interference analysis.

My legislation calls for the FCC to complete an economic study on the impact LPFM stations have on full-power commercial radio stations within 18 months and report its findings to Congress.

Volunteer, non-profit LPFM stations have found a niche but they also provide competition to full-power stations without having to incur the same costs as those commercial stations, particularly with the absence of licensing fees and employees' salaries. Most of us have raised serious concerns about the continued media consolidation that is occurring and negatively affecting localism and diversity.

Part of the reason for this consolidation is because local, independently owned stations are seeing lower profit margins, which are making it more and more difficult to continue broadcasting. Due to shrinking profit, these stations either go out of business or are sold out to larger, nationwide companies. The buy-out of local stations by out-of-town firms does more to harm diverse and locally oriented broadcasting than anything else. So we must actively investigate this trend and determine what is contributing to the diminishing returns of independently owned stations.

Some may question why perform this study since Mitre Corporation, the company that performed the initial interference study, recommended the FCC should not undertake the additional expense of a formal listener test program or a Phase II economic analysis. The reason is because the Phase II economic analysis was only on the potential radio interference impact of LPFM on incumbent full-power stations and did not take into account other economic impacts that were outside the scope of that effort. The Government must ensure that by opening up low-power FM broadcast opportunities we are not causing any undue harm to the full- power radio stations, which we have obligations to as the issuer of their licenses.

I hope my colleagues join me in supporting the critical legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that would preserve the Federal Communications Commission's right to deny a low-power FM license if the applicant has run afoul of basic, longstanding Federal restrictions on the transmission of radio waves, such as if the applicant has been previously fined for running an unlicensed ``pirate'' radio station.

Before the issuance of low-power licenses, numerous individuals and entities operated low-power FM stations without a broadcast license. These ``pirate'' stations many times broadcasted in open defiance of the Commission's initial ban on LPFM broadcasts. From January 1998 to February 2000, the Commission shut down, on average, more than a dozen unlicensed radio stations each month. On several separate occasions, these unlicensed radio stations actually disrupted air traffic control communications.

Congress, through the enactment of the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act of 2000, directed the FCC to modify its low-power FM rules to ``prohibit any applicant from obtaining a low-power FM license if the applicant has engaged in any manner in the unlicensed operation of any station in violation of section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934'' so the Commission could curtail these pirate stations and disruption occurrence.

My concern is by completely repealing section 632, which pending legislation proposes, it hinders the ability of the FCC to prohibit applicants from receiving low-power FM licenses. The Commission is responsible for making sure broadcasters follow the basic rules and regulations that are inherently essential to having a broadcast service that serves public interest since broadcasters are utilizing public spectrum. This legislation retains a targeted response to the problem of pirate broadcasting.

The commission is to grant a broadcast license only if the ``public interest, convenience, and necessity would be served.'' Completely repealing Section 632 could hinder the FCC from upholding this responsibility with respect to low-power FM broadcasters. For this

reason, we must act to preserve the FCC's authority to be able to prohibit low-power FM licenses to applicants that have violated basic tenets of broadcast policy--it is only logical that we do this to ensure businesses that use the public spectrum, in any capacity, adhered to laws government has put in place to serve and protect the public interest.

I hope my colleagues join me in supporting the critical legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that I believe is vital to the prosperity and competitiveness of an element of agriculture that is often overlooked: American aquaculture. Some experts estimate that to meet the demand for healthy, fresh aquacultural products, global production will have to double in the next 40 years. Yet in spite of this skyrocketing demand, America is at risk of being left behind by other nations who have thus far exhibited greater foresight than we have; putting into place a comprehensive infrastructure for sustainable seafood. While it is true that American aquaculture sales exceeded an impressive one billion dollars in 2005, this was a pittance when compared to the $70 billion market worldwide. In fact, in 2006 the U.S. had a trade deficit in seafood production of $9.1 billion. With demand rising so dramatically globally and, in particular, here at home, we cannot afford to fall behind any further.

That is why I have taken this opportunity to introduce the National Aquatic Animal Health Act. This legislation will begin the process of creating a national infrastructure that will attract investment, protect the valuable stocks of our aquaculture farmers from disease, and create a unique, flexible partnership between the Federal Government, State agencies, and industry groups. Dedicated to proactively monitoring seafood stocks for disease, this program will employ the resources and vast field experience of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, coupled with experts on disease at various State agriculture and marine agencies and industry professionals to certify the health of all participating aquaculture species.

Modeled after similar animal monitoring programs already in place at APHIS, this program will provide a nationwide set of standards, the kind of uniformity that is currently absent in the aquaculture community. Instead, a myriad of jurisdictional conflicts and competing regulations among various states creates uncertainty and erects impediments to interstate commerce. But this bill is not a set of onerous regulations imposed upon the private sector by a federal agency; under the legislation, states are required to opt-in to the program. They must choose to utilize the assets available in this legislation to assist in preserving that state's particular aquaculture products.

My home State of Maine has tremendously benefited from aquaculture. There are nearly three dozen hatcheries in the State, handling both finfish and shellfish. Our 3,500 miles of coastline has served as an ideal incubator for the expansion of the aquaculture industry. The total economic activity generated from the industry State-wide was over $130 million last year, providing jobs for over 1,000 hard-working Mainers. This sort of productivity was not always the case. In 2001, nearly all the salmon stocks in Maine had to be eliminated due to an outbreak of a crippling, infectious disease known as ISA. It took the industry years to recover. Now, the Great Lakes face the threat of the virulent pathogen known as VHS. It is my hope that with swift passage of this legislation, we will no longer have to fear this kind of widespread disease and the subsequent containment costs that could cause inestimable damage to an industry that is struggling to catch up to its global competitors. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation as we move forward on debating Federal farm policy.

Mr. President, as Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I rise today to introduce, with Chairman Kerry, the Small Business Contracting Revitalization Act of 2007. This critical legislation is a product of consensus-building and compromise over the past few years and truly reflects the bipartisan nature of our Committee. Thank you, Chairman Kerry, for working to make this a truly bipartisan bill.

This legislation addresses the numerous barriers facing small businesses in securing their fair share of Federal contracting dollars. Currently, small businesses are eligible for $340 billion in Federal contracting dollars, yet receive only $77 billion. Regrettably, the Federal Government consistently fails to satisfy its 23 percent small business goal resulting in small businesses losing billions of dollars in contracting opportunities.

I am dismayed by the myriad ways that Government agencies have time and again egregiously failed to achieve

most of their small business statutory ``goaling'' requirements. For example, in fiscal year 2006, the Historically Underutilized Business Zone, HUBZone, program met only 2.1 percent of its three percent goal, while our Nation's service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses received a Government-wide, paltry total of only 0.9 percent of its three percent small business goal. This longstanding area of concern is coupled with a litany of deficiencies that include ``contract bundling,'' sub-contracting misrepresentations, inaccurate small business size determinations, flawed reporting data, and under- utilization of key small business contracting programs.

As the Chairman is well aware, these problems are not new, and our Committee has held countless hearings on various contracting concerns throughout the years. Business opportunities through Federal contracts provide vital economic benefits for small businesses, which is why last year, my Small Business Administration Reauthorization Bill, which passed our Committee unanimously, contained a robust package of small business contracting initiatives.

Our legislation builds on the contracting provisions of that bill, by improving all of the small business contracting programs--including the HUBZone, small disadvantaged business, women-owned small business, and service-disabled veteran-owned small business programs. It equips the SBA with additional tools to meet the demands of an ever-changing 21st century contracting environment.

This bipartisan measure also includes several other priorities that I have long championed--most notably, enhancing the HUBZone program. In my home state of Maine, only 118 of 41,026 small businesses are qualified HUBZone businesses. HUBZones represent a tremendous tool for replacing lost jobs for our Nation's declining manufacturing and industrial sectors--clearly, this program should be better utilized.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to pass this bipartisan small business contracting legislation to ensure that all small business ``goals'' are not only met--but exceeded.