Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 6233) to make supplemental agricultural disaster assistance available for fiscal year 2012 with the costs of such assistance offset by changes to certain conservation programs, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill, H.R. 6233, the supplemental agriculture disaster assistance.

Look, weather impacts our lives. I'm going to talk a little bit about climate change and some of the driving factors that are causing more severe weather conditions, be they droughts or floods. Yes, they affect businesses, but the solution is not another Republican Big Government government bailout of yet another industry. The Republicans have bailed out Wall Street. The Republicans have bailed out the banks. Now the Republicans are seeking to bail out cows. Yes, Mr. Speaker, another Big Government solution to another problem, in part, of their own creation by refusing to take up action and reducing our carbon emissions for climate change.

Where does this all end, when it's too cloudy? The solar industry might suffer. Are we going to bail them out? When it's not windy enough, the wind industry might suffer. Are we going to bail them out? We have restaurants on Pearl Street Mall in Boulder that have rooftop lounges. When it's too hot, less people go up to the rooftop lounges. We've had a drought in May and June and not enough people went to rooftop lounges. I would like to ask my colleague, Ms. Foxx, if there could be government bailout money for those rooftop lounges.

I yield to the gentlelady from North Carolina.

Reclaiming my time, there's just a particular sector. Maybe they have a lot of lobbyists. Maybe they're a big special interest, they own cows. We're going to bail them out because the price of hay has gone up. That's what we're talking about here today.

We're talking about a closed rule. We're talking about a closed process. This is nothing new, this lack of transparency, this limited debate, pushing through a Big Government Republican bailout on short notice without even giving Members enough time to offer improvements to the bill, to change the bill. The first time that Republicans and Democrats even saw this bill was late Tuesday night, and here we are on the floor of the House without a single hearing, without a single markup, pushing through this bill, shutting out opportunities for Democrats or Republicans to offer improvements to this bill.

This is one of the worst and widest droughts we've seen in decades. I see that firsthand in Colorado. We have had devastating fires this summer coupled with extreme heat in the West. This is indicative of a need to address the true culprit: climate change. The evidence that recent droughts and heat waves are linked to climate change is growing suddenly and represents the strong scientific consensus.

We need the very conservation programs in the farm bill that are being gutted for this Big Government bailout of cows. The very programs cut by this bill are needed to help farmers and ranchers conserve soil, conserve water to make their farms and ranches more resilient to the devastating impacts we see from climate change and to mitigate that impact.

Look, American farmers, ranchers, and environmentalists have all been waiting for months to see a farm bill come to the floor. To the disappointment of many, instead of a farm bill, which I understand for at least 5 weeks we're not going to see in the House of Representatives, we're presented with a cow bailout, which is yet another Republican Big Government bailout of an American industry.

When the Senate passed their farm bill over a month ago, the House majority couldn't even manage to bring a package to the floor for Members to debate. Earlier this week, the Republicans were looking at a 1-year extension of the farm bill and have now decided to pull that 1- year extension in favor of a cow bailout.

Let me once again stress that our severe concerns around droughts in the West and across the country are critical, but we mustn't gut programs that are some of the very programs that can help prevent the impact of droughts in seeking to bail out a particular industry. When we look at drought assistance funding, we need to have a bipartisan discussion about how we're going to structure it and where it's going to come from and why certain industries are going to be favored over others.

Why is there going to be a cow bailout instead of a rooftop terrace bailout? When it's too hot, businesses suffer. If you're going to have a big Republican bailout, why don't you discuss who it goes to and not just give it to who has the most lobbyists here or who gives the most campaign contributions.

Furthermore, the conservation provisions that are cut by this bill do have strong bipartisan support in both Chambers. Both the Senate and the House Agriculture Committees understand the importance of the farm bill's conservation title. Both farm bills retain funding for the conservation title because many folks on both sides of the aisle agree that conservation practices are critical to protect our soil, the future production of our agriculture, water, and wildlife resources. That's yet another reason to consider a comprehensive bill, to help ensure the strength of agriculture and protect American jobs, rather than another Republican bailout.

Instead of voting on the underlying bill, instead of even talking about a 5-year extension of the agriculture bill, here we are today gutting critical programs with bipartisan support to bail out yet another industry with a centrally planned Big Government solution.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I listened very carefully to the gentlelady from North Carolina. I didn't hear her defend this bovine bailout that the Republicans are proposing here today. Now, I'm going to take a few minutes and address some of the mischaracterizations of the President of the United States that were in some of those comments, but then I do want to bring it back to this Big Government bovine bailout that the Republicans are proposing here before us today.

Look, the President understands and I understand, as somebody who started several businesses before I got here--I created several hundred jobs--that of course I didn't do it alone. If we didn't have roads so that employees could get to work, I wouldn't have been able to start a company. I wouldn't have been able to have any employees to get to work. If we didn't have schools that help prepare programmers and technicians to work technology companies--tech companies that I started that hired programmers, that were good-paying jobs--I wouldn't have been able to start a company. If we didn't have investors and shareholders and the right level of securities regulation to prevent fraud and to give them the confidence to invest in the companies that I started, we wouldn't have capital formation and venture capital flowing to the companies that needed it.

If we didn't have the rule of law, if we didn't fund our courts, if we didn't invest in basic research, if the government hadn't provided the funding to start the Internet, I wouldn't have been able to start a single company.

And most of my friends who are entrepreneurs, who have started companies, who are corporate executives agree. Yes, the entrepreneur is critical. And the President's Jobs Council recognizes that, and this President has been more friendly to entrepreneurship and to business than any President in my lifetime, working to ensure that small businesses have the opportunity to succeed and grow and create jobs in the private sector.

But without that basic infrastructure, we have to ask ourselves what separates the United States of America from a country like Somalia or even a centrally planned country like North Korea. A lot separates us. But a big part of that is this collaboration of a public sector role that enables entrepreneurship, enables success in the private sector, enables people to create fortunes, enables people to create jobs. That's the proper role of government.

Government doesn't stand in the way of job creation. The government's policy framework, courts people can trust, roads for people to get to work, good public schools, good health care--that's what enables success. As somebody who reached some degree of success in the private sector before I got here, I agree completely with President Obama that I couldn't have achieved that degree of success without the public infrastructure that played a role in allowing me and so many other entrepreneurs to succeed.

Now, moving back to the topic, the topic of the bovine bailout that the Republicans have proposed here today. The gentlelady from North Carolina said, We have no control over climate, basically. That was the quote that she just said. Well, the vast majority of scientific consensus and agreement would indicate otherwise.

We don't control weather. But climate is different than weather. And, yes, humans are contributing to climate change through carbon emissions and emissions of other greenhouse gases. The global climate has warmed. The average climate in Colorado now is two to three degrees warmer than it was a century ago, and it continues to accelerate. Now, that doesn't cause a drought or a flood in any one particular year, but it causes an increased incidence of severe weather patterns that cost us all money, which is why we're even talking about a bovine bailout here today.

Now, look, I wish this had come to the floor under an open process. I would have offered an amendment just to talk about it to say, why don't you bail out rooftop restaurants, rooftop terraces?

Look, we're talking about the role of the government, the role of the private sector. I find it ironic and to the point of being bizarre-- almost like I'm in an alternative universe--that in the very same remarks that the gentlelady from North Carolina railed against a President who dares to say that the public sector has a role in creating the landscape for private businesses to succeed, at the same time, she is advocating for a bovine bailout of a particular industry.

Now why this particular industry? Why not rooftop terraces? Why not solar, if it's too cloudy? Why not wind, if it's not windy enough? Many, many, many businesses are affected by weather. Retail stores are affected when it snows too much. Should they be coming to Washington, clamoring for a bailout?

Look, both sides respect the role of the private sector. And when you have government preempting the private sector by picking out a particular industry and elevating it above all others, by giving it government subsidies and a big bailout, you are upsetting the very market forces that the gentlelady from North Carolina espoused support of in another context.

This bill today gives us a terrible choice between drought assistance and conservation. Now, both might be worthy; but disproportionate cuts to conservation programs that are used to fund this bill undermine the continued success of conservation programs that have bipartisan support and are helping farmers mitigate the impact of climate change in their businesses.

There are so many other issues of relevance for farmers that this House could be taking up. Why aren't we talking about the estate tax, which affects small farmers across this country? If we don't act by December 31, the estate tax will go to a 55 percent tax above $1 million in assets, forcing many small farmers out of business and preventing them from being passed down from one generation to the next.

Are we going to leave it until the last minute? Is that a plan for the lame duck session? Are the Republicans scared to take on the estate tax before the election?

I would advocate that we get down to work and start addressing issues that actually affect farmers. We should be voting to provide for the success of American agriculture, opening new markets, investing in basic research, helping to ensure that families have access to healthy food and nutrition.

We need to make sure that farmers' and ranchers' needs are addressed. And if we don't address the fundamental drivers of climate change, we're only going to be faced with more and more difficulties, more and more requests for bailouts. It may be cows this time. It may be chickens next time. It may be corn the next time. There are always going to be folks here in Washington, hat in hand, coming to Republicans, saying, Give us a Big Government solution.

And the question will come to this Congress, Are we going to do something about the underlying problem? And whether that approach is through a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax or incentives for renewables, what are we going to do to prevent farmers in this country from being driven out of business? This bill does nothing.

Sure, you can hand them government money. You can hand them taxpayer money, if that's the lack of regard that you have for taxpayer money, you want to hand it out to whoever comes to town and begs for it. Go right ahead. And I have some rooftop terrace restaurant owners in my district. Give them some while you are at it.

That's not a solution. That's what got us into this budget deficit. That's what got us into this hole. Let's address the underlying issue of climate change in a scientific manner, have the real political discussions that are necessary to negotiate a bipartisan solution that reduces our carbon emissions, reduces the impact of climate change on American farmers, reduces the incidence and severity of droughts across the United States of America, and also be the global leaders that we need to be on this critical issue.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I am the only remaining speaker, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to make in order an amendment which proposes that Congress will not adjourn until the President signs middle class tax cuts into law.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. This will give us the opportunity to renew middle class tax cuts. When we talk about job creation, when we talk about growing our economy, the need to make sure that we don't increase taxes on the middle class during a recess is something economists from both sides of the aisle agree on, something Democrats agree on. I hope Republicans agree, too, that we shouldn't raise taxes on at least 98 percent of Americans.

Then let's have the discussion about the other 2 percent. But let's agree on what we agree on. Let's not raise taxes on 98 percent of American families before Congress goes on break. Before the Republicans send us all home to enjoy our summers, let's do something about jobs. Let's do something about the economy, and let's demand that we give middle class families across America the surety and the security to know that they're not going to need to pay an additional $1,000 a year in taxes, an additional $2,000 a year in taxes.

I think it is critical, and I call upon my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question so that we can bring forward this critical amendment to provide the certainty that America needs to grow our economy and create jobs.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 752 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

House Resolution 752 is a closed rule providing for the consideration of H.R. 6233, the Agricultural Disaster Assistance Act of 2012.

As a lifelong farmer myself, including operating a nursery and being a beekeeper, I can certainly empathize with being vulnerable to Mother Nature and the plight caused by unpredictable weather.

Without a doubt, the good Lord has blessed this country with an abundance of natural gifts, and I am very thankful for America's farmers, who work to utilize and protect these blessings to help feed our country and others throughout the world. Unfortunately, the drought devastating so much of the United States this year has yielded a tremendous amount of financial hardships not only for these farmers but also for those throughout the rest of the economy that depend on their products.

Mr. Speaker, it's important to remember that it is not just farmers affected by this drought. The consequences of this disaster impact all Americans, from those living in the biggest cities to those living in the most remote areas of this country. Not only does drought aggravate the risk of wildfires that have raged throughout the West, but it compromises our crops, which are used to feed our livestock and even fuel our cars.

The effects will last long after rain brings much-needed relief. With the price of corn jumping 50 percent since June, grocery costs continue to climb. The Department of Agriculture now estimates food prices could climb between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent this year, and between 3 percent and 4 percent next year.

Also of consequence to price conscious energy consumers is how the

drought impacts the price of gasoline. Federal law provides that 10 percent of gasoline to be composed of ethanol. The increasing price has led some ethanol refineries to cut production, which, in turn, increases what drivers pay at the pump.

While many will suffer from inflated costs of staples they use every day, there are millions of Americans who live in communities throughout this country that are economically dependent on agriculture activity. Many of those living in sparsely populated regions work in businesses that thrive on the income associated with agricultural sales.

If anything positive is to come from this drought, my hope is that Americans gain a renewed appreciation for all the different ways agricultural productivity touches everyone's lives every day.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time

I'm sorry. I don't understand the analogy that you're making.

Mr. Speaker, again, we all grieve for the people in this country who are willing to farm, who are willing to deal with the vicissitudes of mother nature and do their best to provide food and other products for the American people and people all around the world.

We obviously don't have a lot of control over the weather. We have no control over the weather. We have no control over the climate, basically, but we need to respond to our fellow human beings, our fellow Americans when there is a need to do that.

The drought would not be as exacerbated and the effects would not be so exacerbated were it not for the overall job climate in this country. We are really suffering from the effects of our colleagues having been in charge of the Congress for 4 years and an administration that is totally out of touch with what is happening, not only in this country, but around the world, in terms of our economic situation. We have record unemployment in this country, Mr. Speaker. We have record deficits. We have record debts. It seems like everybody recognizes that except for our liberal colleagues across the aisle.

We know there's something wrong with the American job climate in this country. Whereas most people recognize the government should not wall off entrepreneurship with oppressive taxes, a costly, overcomplicated, and unnecessarily burdensome regulatory apparatus, we have a liberal President who is so out of touch that he said:

If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody

else made that happen.

It would be bad enough if that were the first Freudian slip from liberal leaders here in Washington, but this comes on the heels of both President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decreeing on separate occasions that the private sector is doing

just fine. Apparently, the two highest ranking Democrats in the country are trying to convince themselves of an alternative reality where unemployment would no longer be a problem if only more Americans worked for the government. Fortunately, we still have a lot of Americans working out there trying to produce food for all of us.

I recognize there are many government workers, teachers, police officers, firefighters, who provide critical services to this country. But to suggest that the unemployment problem in this country can be solved by continuing an unending, demonstrably failed liberal spending spree ignores the reality that it's the private sector that generates the wealth which provides revenue for government to work through an increasing seizure of personal earnings, as was displayed on the floor yesterday.

Liberal elites would have us all believe that the only way to promote job growth is through a perpetual expansion of special handouts and concessions to government employee unions and politically favored industries.

Less we forget that a centrally planned government-sponsored green jobs revolution was the only solution for unemployment worries during the height of the recent recession, I want to remind my colleague of the Solyndra loans and the many loans in that area that were made that have created crony capitalism in our country. The liberal Democrats promised to solve these problems by ramming through a $1 trillion stimulus bill, financed exclusively by our posterity through deficit spending and quickly shifted their focus on other crises vulnerable to exploitation, such as a new $800 billion energy tax that sought to crush millions of jobs while sending hundreds of billions overseas as well as the now-infamous government takeover of health care, otherwise known as ObamaCare.

We're actually fortunate for these striking statements which reveal a peek into the mystifying mindset of liberal elites who apparently believe that government dependence is a necessary condition for economic health.

Well, here's a news flash for the liberals who remain stubbornly unaware of the hardships that continue to grip Americans: the results are in, and everyone else knows that Big Government cannot simply prescribe economic prosperity and have it be so.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire of my colleague if he has any more speakers or if he is ready to close.

Mr. Speaker, I will close after the gentleman closes.

Mr. Speaker, I would just say to my colleague across the aisle, I don't understand why our friends can't take yes for an answer. We want to extend the tax cuts that were begun over 10 years ago to everyone in this country. We agree with that, and that's what we're doing. We don't want to raise taxes on anyone.

I would also like to commend to my colleague across the aisle, who represents a group of people who only ask for bipartisan cooperation when they're in the minority, a book by Australian geologist Ian Plimer who wrote a book called ``Heaven and Earth,'' which I think really does do a scientific presentation of what is happening in terms of climate change.

Last, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that my colleague is trying to deal with a chicken and egg issue relative to infrastructure and how does infrastructure get funded. He wants to say that this all comes from the benevolent government, but he conveniently leaves out the fact that the government doesn't create wealth. All our government does is spend wealth, and in many cases waste the fruits of hardworking Americans by doing things often very inefficiently. Public infrastructure is funded by the taxes that we take away from hardworking Americans.

Entrepreneurs predated the government in our country. And we all know that the Constitution was written to try to establish a limited government in our country so that the entrepreneurial spirit could thrive, as it has in most cases. My colleague talks about the government enabling entrepreneurs. Excuse me, I don't believe the government does a lot to enable the private sector. What most people in the private sector will tell you is just get the government out of my way. Get the foot of the government off my neck, and I will do just fine.

I know my colleague has been in the private sector and created a lot of wealth for himself, and I applaud him for doing that. But most of the people that I know, Mr. Speaker, who are in the private sector would simply say the government isn't enabling me at all. Leave me alone, and I'll do just fine.

Mr. Speaker, talk about taking the President's words out of context, as I think my colleague knows, when you put the President's words in context, they are even more disturbing than outside of context. I do believe that our President does believe that the government is the solution, and most of us think the government is the problem. I urge my colleagues to support this rule.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 752, I call up the bill (H.R. 6233) to make supplemental agricultural disaster assistance available for fiscal year 2012 with the costs of such assistance offset by changes to certain conservation programs, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of H.R. 6233, which provides disaster aid to livestock and other producers.

I am sure all of my colleagues are keenly aware of what is happening all across this great country. A drought of epic proportions is gripping a large majority of the Nation, and it is endangering vast areas of agriculturally productive land. The map behind me illustrates just how widespread and how bad this drought really is. Just yesterday, in my home State of Oklahoma, we had temperatures topping out at 115 degrees. Vast areas of productive pastureland are burning up, and our ranchers are in dire need.

But also let's be very clear as to why we are here on the floor today. In 2008, Congress passed a farm bill that did not provide a final year of disaster assistance. I have heard people call this ``extending disaster assistance by a

year.'' No. What we are doing is fixing a problem. We are backfilling a hole--or fixing a deficiency.

I'm not here to point fingers. I was elected to fix problems. We have a drought. We don't have a disaster program, and I am here to provide a solution. Now, in past years, we might just wave our hands and declare this to be emergency spending, but we tend not to do that anymore, thank goodness. This bill pays for itself. Not only does it pay for itself, but it gives more than $250 million to deficit reduction. To me, that sounds like fixing a problem.

Amazingly, that's not the end of the story.

Some people do not like how we paid for the bill. Quite frankly, I don't either. I was the subcommittee chairman for conservation programs in 2002 when we gave an extra $17 billion to conservation programs. I am a proponent of voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs, but let me give you a little history on EQIP funding.

Ten years ago, in fiscal year 2002, we authorized $200 million in EQIP spending. In fiscal year 2009, we authorized $1.34 billion, and for fiscal year 2013, we authorized $1.75 billion. Yes, we are cutting real dollars: $350 million will not go to our farmers and ranchers to help comply with the enormous regulations facing them. But, at the end of the day, this will still be the largest amount of money ever spent on the EQIP program, seven times what we spent in 2002.

The other offset is the CSP program, which was vastly, I might note for the record, improved in 2008. For those of you here in 2008 who voted for the farm bill, the CSP program in the House bill had zero dollars when it left the House. In the just-passed Ag Committee farm bill, we limited CSP to 9 million acres. I greatly respect the conservation community, but to hear them say we are destroying conservation programs could not be farther from the truth.

You will also hear people complain that this isn't the full farm bill. My priority remains to get a 5-year farm bill on the books and to put those policies into place.

But the most pressing business before us today is to provide disaster assistance to those producers impacted by drought conditions who are currently exposed. It is as simple as that. There is a problem out there. Let's fix it.

Let me address the farm bill that my colleagues seem to either love or hate or love to hate or hate to love. The bill is not perfect. No legislation is. We can spend our time trying to chip away at the Federal deficit $1 million at a time, coming down to the floor on every appropriations bill, or we can spend our time writing opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal, or we can do something about it. The farm bill that passed out of my committee, the Agriculture Committee, saves $35 billion. Let me repeat that: $35 billion.

Tell me another piece of legislation that has bipartisan support and a chance to pass the United States Senate that saves that much money. My friends on my side of the aisle will say we don't cut enough while, my friends on the other side of the aisle will say we cut too much. This is the perfect case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I believe in the legislative process. I believe in letting the House work its will. We did it in the House Agriculture Committee, and we can do it here, too.

Mr. Speaker, let me say again: I am committed to giving certainty to our farmers. I plan to work towards the goal when we get back in September, but we are here today to fix a problem. Let's do it without partisan bickering. There's a disaster happening out there. Let's give the tools to our ranchers who are the most exposed. The bill is paid for. Let's do what the American people sent us here to do: fix problems. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting for H.R. 6233.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from South Dakota (Mrs. Noem).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), one of the most experienced and knowledgeable members of the Ag Committee.

(Mr. GOODLATTE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer) who's been dealing with drought issues for 2 years in a row now.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry), one of the most active members of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), one of my lead subcommittee chairmen who put a tremendous amount of effort into this farm bill process.

(Mr. CONAWAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham) who does very important work for agriculture on the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson), a tireless voice for rural American production of agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time.

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I think the bill we address today is very straightforward. We are going to help a group of producers who, when the '08 farm bill passed, thought they had something they could depend on, but because of budget issues, the 5th year is not funded. We need to help them by fulfilling our commitment that what we said would be there will be there. We do it in a responsible way. We do it in a way that does not truly affect the dollars going to additional conservation programs, based on recent years.

But my colleague's right. This addresses an issue that matters to producers who, for the last 10 months and for the next approximately 2 months, are not able to use a program they thought would be there. But the underlying issue still is passing a comprehensive 5-year farm bill; a farm bill that is such that all commodities and all regions can participate; a farm bill that will provide certainty; a farm bill that will make sure that the food and fiber that meet the needs of American consumers and, yes, consumers around the world can be on the books.

My friend and I have worked very hard, and we have made more progress this year than many pundits would have ever given us credit for, but we're not quite there yet. We may not exactly agree on every footstep to get there, but we agree we have to get there. Let's take care of the folks who are hurting today, and let's work to get that farm bill process completed.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to pass H.R. 6233, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Today is the last session before the August recess, and once again the House will adjourn without finishing its work. It's no wonder nobody likes Congress anymore. Members will now have to explain to their constituents why the House did not even try to consider a new 5- year farm bill. Frankly, we're in this position because the House leadership has refused to bring the 5-year farm bill to the floor.

Working in a bipartisan tradition on the Agriculture Committee, Chairman Lucas and I have crafted a new 5-year farm bill making many important and needed reforms. I appreciate the efforts of the chairman in trying to enact a long-term policy, and I know that if he had his way, as he just said, we would have already passed a farm bill. The chairman and I were ready to mark up our bill at the end of June, but the Republican leadership stepped in and said that they wanted us to consider the ag approps bill. So we held off for a couple of weeks, and then they didn't even bring the ag approps bill to the floor. The committee completed their work then on July 11, passing a new bill, a 5-year bill, 35-11 in a bipartisan vote. But rather than bring this bill to the floor, the House instead focused on messaging bills that are going nowhere.

I understand that this is an election year and the majority wants to promote their message, and I've even voted for some of these bills. You would think that after delaying us for 2 weeks, the leadership could have found 2 days on the House calendar to consider the committee's farm bill before the August recess.

Instead of bringing up the 5-year farm bill, the Republican leadership last week put forth a 1-year farm bill extension hoping to delay action until the next Congress, with hopes, for some people, that they're going to dismantle the farm and food safety nets. Fortunately, under intense opposition from those in agriculture and others, the leadership had to pull the bill. This brings us to today's consideration of H.R. 6233. This measure will provide some assistance to a few livestock producers affected by drought conditions across the country. Providing assistance to livestock producers, primarily cattle and sheep, is necessary and important, but this is not a comprehensive disaster package. Dairy and specialty crop producers are going to be left hurting, and there's no assistance for pork and poultry producers.

The Ag Committee's farm bill not only includes the livestock provision we're considering today, it also strengthens the farm safety net on a wide-ranging list of commodities. The 5-year farm bill will do a better job of providing certainty for American agriculture and assistance during this period of drought.

Additionally, I have concerns about the conservation cuts that are used to pay for this assistance. I don't think cutting conservation programs to offset the cost of disaster is the right approach. If there was more time, maybe we could find a better way to do this. But in the rush of putting this bill together, it didn't give us the necessary time to explore all of the options. This is yet another reason that I think bringing up a 5-year bill makes more sense.

It's just mystifying to me why House leaders can't take ``yes'' for an answer. I don't know how many times I've heard from the other side complaints about the Senate not being able to get our bills passed. We passed a lot of bills, most of which I supported, that are over in the Senate and they never took them up. Now the Senate has passed a bill, and this may be the only time that we will ever be able to get a farm bill through the Senate. They passed it on a bipartisan basis. We passed it on a bipartisan basis. Now the leadership doesn't want to bring it up. I don't understand it.

The farm economy is the one part of the economy that is actually working, doing well, has been solid for the last few years. This is due in part, I believe, to the strong farm bill that we passed in '08. Weathering a natural disaster without the certainty of a 5-year bill could jeopardize one of the bright spots we have in this economy.

With all that said, I do recognize the effects the drought is having on our farmers, and I will vote in favor of H.R. 6233. However, this bill is a sad substitute for what is really needed--a long-term farm policy. So I'll continue to urge my colleagues to bring up the House agriculture 5-year farm bill and to ensure that all producers will have necessary assistance during these times of disaster.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Iowa, one of our ranking members, Mr. Boswell.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. David Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to support this bill. It's better than nothing, but it's not what we should be doing.

People need to understand that this is not going to solve any problems for anybody over August, other than the political problem that they have where they go home and can't point to anything that got done, so they'll be able to say they voted for a bill.

This bill is not going anyplace in the other body. They have passed through the other body a bipartisan bill that has a better disaster provision in it than what we're considering here today. Their position is my position, and that is that we should be moving this bill and getting it enacted into law.

So, out of my friendship and respect for the chairman, I am supporting this bill. But I think he'll probably agree with me that we need to get this bill to conference. We need to get it moved. We need to get it done so we can get it in place by September 30, so producers can get what they really need out of this bill, and that is a long-term policy they know they can count on.

So I ask my colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank Chairman Lucas for his leadership on this issue and Ranking Member Peterson for his support of this effort to take action to help livestock producers who are being devastated by the drought. Livestock farmers in the Sixth District of Virginia have been hit hard by the heat and the derecho that swept through the Shenandoah Valley last month.

This disaster relief was included in the 2008 farm bill but, unfortunately, did not last the full length of the farm bill. I am pleased that the Congress has found a way to provide relief for these livestock farmers; and not only do we provide the relief, but we pay for it. And not only do we pay for it, but we also achieve additional savings that are applied to the deficit. If every bill passed by the Congress reduced spending overall, we would be in much better fiscal condition in the Federal Government.

While the Congress is taking an important first step in providing relief for drought-stricken livestock farmers, the administration has at hand a tool that they should use right now to provide drought relief as well.

The Obama administration has at its disposal an easy relief valve that would provide drought relief, if only temporarily--a reduction in the government-mandated Renewable Fuel Standard. I have long been a critic of the RFS that has increased food and feed stocks being diverted into fuel, leading to diminished supplies for livestock and food producers. In fact, last year, 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop was used for ethanol production. There is no doubt that this policy has driven up the price of corn, which today is hovering around $8 a bushel. This, in turn, drives up the cost of food.

Unfortunately, because of the drought, we no longer have the luxury of being just worried about the price. This drought is so devastating that we have to be increasingly worried we do not have a large enough corn supply to meet all of our competing demands.

As we confront the reality of the tightening corn supplies, there are real concerns about having enough to satisfy the RFS and the needs of our food producers. We should not be in a position where we are choosing between fuel and food. In fact, the government has chosen: they've chosen fuel over food with a policy that mandates a certain amount of corn production going to ethanol production each year.

As the drought further shrinks the corn supply, we are unfortunately also going to see livestock herds shrink. This shrinking herd will affect consumers' grocery bills, resulting in consumers having to spend more in the grocery store. Rural communities that depend on livestock will be hit hard as producers affected by both the availability and high price of corn are being forced to limit their production or are being squeezed out of business.

The law allows the Administrator of the EPA to reduce the required volume of renewable fuels in any year based on severe harm to the economy or environment of a state, a region or the United States, or in the event of inadequate domestic supply of renewable fuel. This drought and the shrinking corn crop are causing severe economic harm in the countryside and on grocery store shelves.

The Administrator of the EPA has already received a petition to waive the RFS for a year. Today, over 150 bipartisan members, from coast to coast, joined in calling for Administrator Jackson to waive the RFS. The Congress is acting today to help drought stricken livestock farmers, but now the Obama Administration must act to use their authority to help these same farmers. This relief is not only desperately needed, but I believe is required by the law.

I urge all members to join today in supporting this bill to help provide much needed drought relief, and I urge the Administration to join the Congress in acting to provide drought relief by waiving the