Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, today we have before us the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012. It is more commonly known as the farm bill. It is critically important for America's farmers and ranchers. But it might also be known as the conservation bill, as the food bill, and, even better, the kitchen table bill because this bill affects every one of us.

The Agriculture Committee is different from most other committees in Congress. Our committee room does not have a raised dais. Instead, we sit around a table just like families across the country do and just like farmers and ranchers do after a long day of work in the fields. To write this farm bill, we sat down around our table and we talked to each other and we listened to each other and we worked in a bipartisan way to craft a bill that creates jobs while cutting subsidies and reducing the deficit.

The result of that effort is what is before us in the Senate. It is a bill that affects every family across the country. The farm bill makes it possible for many families to come together around their own kitchen tables to enjoy the bounty of the world's safest, most abundant, and most affordable food supply.

We are also aware, especially in this very tough economy, that many of our neighbors, many of our friends, many of our family members are struggling to put food on their own tables. The farm bill is critically important to those families as well. As we begin our debate in the Senate on the farm bill, let us remember the families all across the country who are counting on us to get this right.

I want my colleagues to also remember that the farm bill is a jobs bill--16 million jobs. Sixteen million jobs in this country rely on the continued strength of American agriculture. They are the people doing the work it takes to put the food on our kitchen tables, not just those on the farm but those who manufacture, sell farm equipment, the people who ship the crops from one place to another, the people who have the farmers markets and local food hubs, the people who work in food processing and crop protection and crop fertility, not to mention the researchers and the scientists who worked hard every day to fight pests and diseases that threaten our food supply.

Throughout this recession, as those 16 million people can attest, agriculture has been one of the truly bright spots in our economy. That is why we made such an important effort, such an important bipartisan effort in this farm bill to support beginning farmers as well. We are giving them additional support for training, mentoring, and outreach to ensure the success of our next generation of farmers.

In addition, we are giving opportunities for U.S. veterans who are interested in pursuing a career in agriculture, and we are creating a military veterans agricultural liaison within the Department of Agriculture to educate veterans about farming and connecting them with beginning farmer training programs. I would also remind my colleagues that for those who have served and are serving us in Iraq and Afghanistan, the majority of them--over half of them--are coming from small towns and rural communities and they are coming home. One of the ways to provide opportunities for jobs is to support them coming back to their community by having the opportunity to go into agriculture.

One of the brightest spots in agriculture has been in exports. This chart shows the incredible growth of agricultural exports over the last number of years. In fact, total agricultural exports in 2011 alone reached $136 billion. It is a 270-percent increase just in the last 10 years, an explosion, as we reach out. American agriculture is looked to and depended upon to feed the families of the world.

Our trade surplus is $42.5 billion. Let me repeat that. We have a significant trade surplus in agriculture. We cannot say that in much of any other place in our economy. But in agriculture we are growing it here at home. The jobs are here at home, and we are exporting it overseas, which is what I would like to see in every one of our industries. It is one of the few areas where we have that kind of success.

We know that for every $1 billion in agricultural exports, we are creating 8,400 American jobs--8,400 American jobs for every $1 billion in exports. The investments we make in market development, in access for our agricultural products overseas, will continue to create jobs here at home.

As we were writing the farm bill, we also did something that families all cross the country are doing during these very hard times. We went through everything we are spending, everything we are spending money on, and we looked at how we could do more for less. We literally went through every page of farm policy and agriculture spending through USDA. This bill represents major reforms that will allow us to focus fewer resources on the things that create jobs and make the biggest difference. In other words, we are refocusing. We are cutting the things that are not important and refocusing on the things that are and the things that create jobs.

The Agriculture Reform Food and Jobs Act is about cutting subsidies and creating jobs in America. The reforms in this bill start on page 1 with the repeal of direct payments, countercyclical payments, and the Average Crop Revenue Election, which has been called the ACRE Program.

We are creating a new approach, a new program that only helps farmers when there is a loss and only for crops they have actually planted, and we are strengthening payment limits. We are ending more than 100 programs and authorizations that are no longer needed, and we are doing all of this in order to be able to cut the deficit by $23 billion.

The most fundamental reform in the Agriculture Reform Food and Jobs Act is the shift away from direct payments

and toward risk management for farmers. Throughout this process, we have been focused on principles, not programs, and the No. 1 principle is risk management. So we are repealing direct payments. We know farmers face unique risks unlike those in other businesses.

Let me stress that again. I do not know of any business that has the same kind of risks in market volatility, in weather volatility than our farmers and ranchers do. It is very fortunate we still have people who want to stay in that business, given all the risks, weather and market conditions, which are out of producers' control. They can have devastating effects. We know that. But the current system focused around direct and countercyclical payments does not focus on actual risk and it is no longer defensible or sustainable.

In this current fiscal and political environment, these programs actually jeopardize our ability to have a real safety net for farmers and the jobs that depend on them. That is why we are eliminating those programs and instead strengthening crop insurance as the centerpiece of risk management in the farm bill.

This is the No. 1 issue we heard from every farmer who has testified before the committee, whether it was in Michigan or in Kansas or across the country. Every region of the country we have heard the same thing loudly and clearly.

The basic foundation of support for producers is crop insurance. We are expanding crop insurance in the bill to include specialty crops and others as well. Because while we know crop insurance is the foundation, it does not work the same. It is not available for every commodity. That is a commitment we have made to expand crop insurance, including specialty crops, which are essentially the kinds of crops we are likely to find in the produce aisle of our supermarket or at the local farmers market: nuts, vegetables, fruits, and other products.

This is an extremely diverse group of crops, and the bill recognizes the unique crop insurance needs of specialty crop growers. We are also taking strides to help young and beginning farmers get started and succeed in farming. We have made revisions to crop insurance to better help those new farmers by reducing their crop insurance premiums and providing additional support when disasters strike.

Supplement crop insurance. This bill creates a simple market-oriented and risk-based program we are calling ARC, Agricultural Risk Coverage. ARC represents a significant and historic reform in agriculture policy. For years, Congress has struggled to balance the needs of different commodities, different programs. This is solved with the new ARC Program, which uses the market as a guide and treats every commodity the same.

The current system essentially amounts to an income transfer from the Federal Treasury to only certain people, certain farmers, because payments are made every year without regard to whether the farmer had a successful year or whether the individual is farming. I say ``certain people'' because many farmers do not qualify for the help today as well.

Direct and countercyclical payments are made using what is called base acres. That is the current system to determine the payments. Base acres were set using what was planted on the farms back in 1980s. So these base acres have little relevance to what is actually happening on many farms today. This change is also very important for new farmers. We have told beginning farmers this is a very important way to support them.

Our ARC, on the other hand, the program we have developed in this bill, uses only the acres a farmer actually plants. It is able to adapt to free market forces and the decisions made being made on the farm without interference from those business decisions a farmer makes. We want the marketplace making the decisions, not the government.

ARC is market oriented. Farmers only get help when the market moves in the opposite direction from historic price trends farmers use to plan their business and make planning decisions. The payment amount is based on actual historic numbers from the marketplace, not from the Halls of Congress.

Finally, too many current program payments are being made to people who do not actually farm or already have large incomes. The farm bill fixes this. Under current law, we say farm payments can only go to people who are actively engaged in farming. This requirement contained a loophole, however, known as the management loophole that lets a farm operation designate managers who are not actually farming, but because they are listed as managers, they can still get a payment from the government, and it can allow them to get around the payment limits.

That does not make any sense. Thanks to Senator Grassley, Senator Tim Johnson, who has legislation in this area--and Senator Grassley is a member of our committee who has been such a champion on this issue--we have eliminated that loophole and made sure the payments are going to people who are actually farming.

This farm bill also reforms the adjusted gross income eligibility requirement, lowers it substantially, eliminating any payment to millionaires. Current law includes two AGI calculations, one for farm income, one for nonfarm income, which is confusing and difficult to administer. It may allow some people to split their income in a way that they are eligible for payments they otherwise would not be eligible for. We close this loophole. We use a single, simple AGI calculation and restrict the eligibility to those who have less than $750,000 in AGI.

Finally, the farm bill caps payments at $50,000, less than half of what a farmer can currently receive. Coupled with closing the management loophole, the farm bill contains the tightest and strongest payment limit reforms ever, while maintaining and strengthening the farm safety net for farmers who really need it. And this is very important. This is not about eliminating options, it is about focusing on those who have the most risk and have the most need.

In dairy, we also reform our Nation's dairy policies, replacing the dairy programs with new, market-oriented programs that allow farmers to manage their own risk in a manner that works best for them. The dairy industry suffered serious hardship in 2009, as many of us know--and certainly the Presiding Officer knows we in Michigan have the same thing--when milk prices dropped substantially, wiping out many small and medium-sized dairies. Despite spending $1.3 billion that year, our current dairy programs weren't able to help many of the farmers in crisis. In some cases, dairy farms that had been passed down from generation to generation went bankrupt and, sadly, some farmers even took their own lives.

Dairy operations across the country are extremely diverse, and the dairy policies we are setting in this bill recognize that diversity. We created programs that can be customized by each dairy, and we allow individual dairies to determine whether to participate in the programs at all. Two programs will now comprise the dairy risk management system: the Dairy Production Margin Protection Program and the Dairy Market Stabilization Program.

The first provides support based on margin--that is, the difference between the milk price and the feed input costs. This is important because rising grain prices, coupled with dropping milk prices, can have a devastating impact on America's dairies. Producers will have to share in the program's costs--and this is important--but it will allow them to manage their risk on more of their production at higher protection levels. We are providing a discounted premium for the first 4 million pounds of milk marketed for each producer--which is somewhere around 200 to 250 cows--to make sure that small and medium-sized operations will be able to participate and that all farms will be eligible.

The second program, the Market Stabilization Program, sends clear market signals to producers that indicate when they are oversupplying the market. Dairy is a unique commodity in that it is produced 365 days a year, cows must be milked daily, the raw product requires further handling and processing, and there are significant regional differences in management and marketing. By temporarily reducing a participating operation's payment for milk marketed by a small percentage when there is too much supply, the

margin program removes the incentive for dairies to overproduce during times of low margins. The program also includes a suspension trigger based on world prices that ensures U.S. dairies are competitive in the global market.

Conservation. Throughout this farm bill, we took the same approach as a family sitting around the table would when they are trying to figure out cuts in their own budget. We went through every program, again looked at what was working, what wasn't, looked for duplication and waste, and we focused on principles, not programs. An excellent example of that really is conservation.

Farming is measured in generations. Farms are passed down from children to grandchildren. But a farm can only be successful if it has quality soil and clean water. One of the farmers who testified before our committee told us that conservation programs which ``enhance and protect our natural resource base is a crop insurance program for the nation.'' I would agree. With a growing global population, it is even more important than ever that we conserve water and conserve soil resources. Advances in technology and farm practices have helped our farmers be more productive than ever before, but no amount of technology can overcome degraded soils, poor water quality, or a lack of water.

The farm bill is actually our Nation's single biggest investment in land and water conservation on private lands in our country. As we went through every program, we focused on making them more flexible and easier to use. We have been able to focus 23 different programs into 13. We have reduced it to 13 and put them in 4 primary functions, with a lot more flexibility for the users.

The first function is working lands--giving farmers and ranchers the tools they need to be better stewards of the land. The Environmental Quality Incentive Program--or EQIP--is one of the most important conservation programs for working lands, providing technical and financial assistance to farmers, ranchers, and private forest owners to help them conserve soil and water. This function also includes the Conservation Stewardship Program, which encourages higher levels of conservation and the adoption of emerging conservation technologies.

We also continued the conservation innovation grants and the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program, which allows private landowners to get added benefits from their lands by opening them up to hunting, fishing, bird watching, and other kinds of outdoor recreation. We made these programs more flexible--and this is very important--and we added a focus on wildlife habitats and made them easier for farmers to take advantage of.

The second area is the Conservation Reserve Program--very important. It removes highly erodible land from production to benefit soil and water quality as well as wildlife habitat. Parts of the Southwest-- certainly my friend and colleague from Kansas knows this--have experienced record droughts this year. It is stunning what has happened, and it is the worst since the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. But the soil, while it was dry, stayed on the ground because the Conservation Reserve Program was a part of that change protecting the soil and air. Our conservation efforts are actually working, and we are seeing changes even in the worst of times as it relates to the droughts.

CRP has also been critical in our efforts to rebuild wildlife populations and to reduce pollution in our streams, our rivers, and our lakes. We also continued an important transition incentives program to help older farmers transition their land to beginning farmers.

Third, we focused on regional partnerships. We consolidated four different programs into one that will provide competitive, merit-based grants to regional partnerships comprised of conservation groups, universities, farmers, ranchers, and private landowners to support improvements to soil health, water quality and quantity, and wildlife habitat. That is certainly important to me for the Great Lakes--and I know the Presiding Officer cares about that as well--but it is also critical for the Chesapeake Bay. And I want to thank our colleagues from the bay area, certainly Senator Cardin and Senator Casey, who are on the committee, but also Senator Warner and Members all across the bay who have been deeply involved in making sure we get this right. It is also there for other critical areas around the country that have large-scale regional challenges around conservation.

Finally, I am really proud of the work that was done around easements. Easements allow landowners to voluntarily enter into an agreement to preserve wetlands and farmland to protect against development and sprawl. This year, funding for both the Wetlands Reserve Program and the Grasslands Reserve Program were was out. So we streamlined and consolidated to establish an easement program with a permanent baseline going forward to protect agricultural lands from development.

This bill also includes a bipartisan sodsaver provision, and I wish to thank Senators Thune, Johanns, and Sherrod Brown for bringing it forward, authoring it, and working with us. This provision helps prevent the plowing up of native prairie. Sodsaver is aimed at protecting grasslands at high risk of being converted to cropland. This is not only good for conservation, it saves taxpayers $200 million over 10 years, and it is tied to crop insurance.

I should also say that while the conservation title in the farm bill is a big win for conservation of our environment, I am proud to say we have continued to link the commodity title, which I described earlier, to conservation.

In crop insurance, the sodsaver program creates a penalty if, in fact, someone is plowing up native prairie. They would lose part of their discount under crop insurance if they did that. So it is tied there, and that is very important.

I am very proud of the fact that we received support for our approach from 643 different conservation and environmental groups in all 50 States. I think that says loudly and clearly that it is possible to make smart cuts that increase flexibility without sacrificing effectiveness.

Another area in which we have made significant strides is nutrition and healthy foods. For too long our Nation's farm bill ignored the diversity of agriculture and the kinds of healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, that families in America want to put on their kitchen tables as well. We made significant progress on this front in the 2008 farm bill, with the first-ever specialty crops title, and we have continued the progress in the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act.

As I said earlier, as I go to every part of Michigan, I meet people who have worked all their lives, paid taxes, and never imagined they would be put in a position where they would need help putting food on the table for their families. Because of this recession, which has been way too long in Michigan--it is getting better, but we have been hit harder, deeper, and longer than anywhere--a lot of families have had to ask for temporary help. And when they need it, whether it is food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which used to be called food stamps and is now called SNAP, or whether it is help from a food bank, those families are grateful, and we should be there when they need that temporary help.

We all expect those programs to have integrity. And as someone whose State has been hit harder than anyone else's, I want to make absolutely sure these programs are in place for families who need it, and that means making absolutely sure every dollar goes to only the families who need it. That is why we are closing loopholes that allowed lottery winners--and, unbelievably, we have had at least two instances of this in Michigan, where someone won the lottery and was able to continue on food assistance. It is shameful that so many American children go to bed hungry at night and outrageous that people who have won millions of dollars in the lottery would be able to continue food assistance. So we made it absolutely clear that those individuals would be removed from SNAP immediately.

We are also cracking down on the trafficking of food assistance benefits. Right now, thanks to the efforts of the last farm bill, fraud is at an alltime low, but we can do even more. We are

giving additional resources to monitor and prevent benefit trafficking, as well as cracking down on liquor and tobacco stores that are currently allowed to participate in the program.

We are making sure that only people returning to school for career and technical training are eligible for food assistance, not college students who are currently at home or being supported by their parents.

Again, with so many families and so many children in need, we can't afford to divert funds in a way that just shouldn't be there.

We must also ensure that the standards Congress created for SNAP are followed by the States. We are eliminating a gap in standards that has allowed 16 States, including Michigan, to give just $1 to people in the form of energy assistance to help them automatically qualify for additional SNAP benefits. We know families in parts of the country with high energy bills are often those who are most food insecure, and that is why we created the link between food assistance and LIHEAP. But it is clear Congress never intended for State governments to use this in a way that could jeopardize additional assistance for families with the highest utility bills.

Just like with commodity programs, we need to make sure the work we are doing has integrity and is defensible in our current budget climate, and we do this in a very careful way to make sure we do not inadvertently hurt families who truly do have significant energy costs.

In addition to increasing accountability, we are building on the success of programs that reduce hunger and improve access to healthy fruits and vegetables. We increase assistance for food banks through the Emergency Food Assistance Program. In 2010 more than 5 million people visited a food bank, and as we recover from this recession, it is absolutely critical that these organizations have food in stock to help those in need.

We are streamlining the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food to low-income individuals, to focus on seniors, and we are moving women and children into the WIC Program, where they can be better served.

We are continuing the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, which was authored originally by Senator Harkin when he was chairing the committee, and I was very proud to work with him on that. It provides free and healthy snacks to schools with a high number of low-income children, and it has been incredibly successful.

This bill triples our support for farmers markets and gives them resources to develop local infrastructure such as food hubs. And we are continuing an effort to give low-income seniors access to healthy fruits and vegetables at farmers markets and roadside stands.

We are increasing funding for innovative projects such as community gardens and urban greenhouse initiatives and protecting funding for programs that improve people's health.

I should say that all of these are done with small amounts of dollars, but they are very effective.

We are creating a national pilot modeled after Michigan's successful Double Up Food Bucks, which gives families relying on SNAP the opportunity to truly be able to buy fresh fruits and vegetables for their families. We are also authorizing the Healthy Food Financing Initiative to offer loans and grants to help address the problem of food deserts in underserved communities.

We increased funding for several organic programs, which, by the way, is the fastest growing segment of American agriculture. We increased support for organic research and extension, and we nearly doubled funding for the organic cost-share program that supports farmers.

This farm bill is a jobs bill, but it is also a food bill, and the 2012 farm bill goes a long way toward making sure every mom and dad can put healthy, nutritious food on the table for their children.

As we worked through the farm bill around our table in the Agriculture Committee, we focused on streamlining and consolidating programs to get the best possible results. I think that is what people want us to do. I certainly know that is what people in Michigan want us to do. We certainly see that in conservation, but we also approached this in every part of the farm bill.

In farm credit and rural development, we are streamlining the existing laws, removing unused provisions, and making authorizations more effective and the administration more effective so that when we have a part-time mayor who is trying to figure out rural development programs, they can actually do it and they actually use what have been extremely effective programs for rural communities.

In our research title, we eliminated dozens of unused or indefensible authorizations but continued the most important research components and functions, while streamlining operations, improving accountability in the use of Federal research funds, and creating an innovative, new research foundation that matches private dollars and leverages Federal research dollars to get more innovative food and agricultural research. And I wish to thank my friend from Kansas, Senator Roberts, for his important leadership in this as well.

We funded important energy programs, invested in specialty crops and organic farming, as I mentioned, and we have done all of this while saving the Federal taxpayers $23 billion. We did it around our table in the ag room, in a bipartisan fashion, working out differences and arriving at real solutions.

In the coming days, as we get to debate on the farm bill, we will talk more about specifics, and I will join my colleagues from the committee in further explaining various aspects of the bill, and we will continue to work with all of our colleagues to find additional solutions and to improve the bill so that our farm programs work best for all of our regions and all of our States.

While I will do everything I can to work out issues with our colleagues, I wish to stress the important balance we have struck in a bipartisan effort, the reforms we have undertaken, and the work we put into making real reforms without hurting families and without hurting farmers, who are so important to our economic recovery.

I am very proud of the work we have been able to accomplish--it has been a lot of hard work--and the way we saved American taxpayers $23 billion through these reforms. I would encourage colleagues to look closely at the work we have done in the bill, to find a way to support it, to help us send a strong message to all Americans that this Congress, this Senate can make tough, smart decisions that cut spending, invest in America, and that we can do it together.

Speaking of doing it together, I could not have done this without my friend and my partner, Senator Roberts, the ranking member from Kansas. This has been a long and difficult process, but frankly there is nobody I would rather have had sitting across the table from me as we worked out this bill. Too many people look at Washington and only see dysfunction and partisanship and divisiveness. Yet we on the Agriculture Committee have found a way to work together for the good of the country, for 16 million people who depend on agriculture for their livelihood. That couldn't have happened without Senator Roberts' leadership and support, and I thank him as we move forward on this bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

I just left a meeting a few feet away from here with the leaders of some of the American colleges and universities. They came to brief us on a challenge we face across America that we had better be aware of. It is the growing student loan debt.

Just in October 1 year ago, student loan debt in America surpassed credit card debt. It is now $1 trillion. More and more students are going more deeply into debt, which many of them can never repay. Student loan debt is different than other debt. It is different because one cannot discharge it in bankruptcy, which means it is a debt they will carry for a lifetime.

Imagine someone who is 19, 20 years old, that they have been told as long as they have been on this Earth education is the key to the future, and they are sitting across the table from a financial counselor who says they have been accepted at this college. All they need to do is sign up right here for a loan.

What is the natural instinct? Of course, it is to sign on the dotted line: I am doing what I was told to do; I am going to the best school I can get into; I am going to borrow the money and make it happen and my life will be successful and I will pay the money back.

The formula is right, but there are problems. If they drop out of school,

they end up with no diploma, just debt. If they go to a bad school, they end up with a worthless diploma and debt. If they end up, unfortunately, in some aspects of life, occupations and professions, it may take decades to pay off a debt. The average student loan debt is about $25,000 once someone has completed 4 years of education.

We have asked students across Illinois and across the Nation to tell us their stories and the student loan debts go as high as $100,000 and more for 4 years of education. Many of these students are finding themselves in an impossible predicament, where they literally cannot get on with their lives, cannot find a job and, unfortunately, are still stuck with the debt.

They are lucky, incidentally, if they are dealing with a Federal student loan guaranteed debt, so-called Stafford loans, because that is 3.4 percent interest. There are ways they can have that debt forgiven and consolidated. It is a flexible type of debt guaranteed by the Federal Government.

But if they step over that line of Federal Government debt and get into a private student loan, hang on tight. The interest rates go from 3.4 percent to the heavens, 18-percent credit card rate debts. Interest rates are not uncommon when it comes to these private loans. Students find themselves being swallowed by debt they cannot repay that is unfortunately compounded and just goes from bad to worse, to even worse.

Students I have run into thought they were doing the right thing. They went to some of these worthless for-profit schools. They can hardly avoid them. If one gets on the Internet and punches in the search engine for ``college'' or ``universities,'' hang on tight. They are about to be inundated with ads from for-profit schools that tell just how easy it is to get a college diploma. All you have to do is sign up. They used to run an ad here on one of the television stations in Washington. It showed a pretty young girl and she was lounging on her bed with her laptop computer and she said: I am going to college in my pajamas. That kind of come-on--to suggest you can get a worthy college diploma through a for-profit school--unfortunately lures many of these kids into a mountain of debt and worthless diplomas from this for-profit industry--the most heavily subsidized private business in America.

Ninety percent of the money that for-profit schools have in revenue comes right from the Federal Government. Heck, they ought to have their employees join a Federal employees union for that matter because 90 percent of their revenue comes right out of the Federal Treasury. Students end up with the debt and a worthless diploma.

Last week, the quarterly report on household debt of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that student loan debt hit $904 billion in the first quarter of 2012, up from $241 billion just 10 years ago. That is a 275-percent increase since the same period in 2003. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--which many people on the other side of the aisle would like to put out of business--the only leading consumer protection bureau in the Federal Government, estimates that outstanding student loan debt may be even higher, up to $1 trillion.

Students continue to pile on the debt, even as America--most Americans--cut back on other forms of credit, such as mortgage and credit cards. According to a senior economist at the New York Federal Reserve Bank:

It remains the only form of consumer debt to substantially

increase since the peak of household debt in 2008.

The hole just gets deeper for students and the families borrowing money for higher education. Students are graduating with massive amounts of debt and having a very difficult time paying it back. Delinquency rates for student loans are higher than rates for mortgages or automobile loans.

Every week, I hear from students drowning in debt, and I don't mean just recent graduates. Some of the borrowers are in their thirties and forties, even older, and still paying off student loans or paying off private student loans they cosigned for their children or grandchildren. Student loan debt has serious consequences for families and for our economy. In a recent survey of college graduates by Rutgers University, 40 percent of the participants said they delayed making a major purchase, such as a home or car, because of student debt. More than one-quarter of those surveyed put off continuing their education or had moved in with relatives to save money to pay their student loans.

Private student loans don't come with the same consumer protections and payment plans Federal loans offer. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of our Senate education committee, introduced a bill with me to help families understand the difference between the Federal student loan and private student loans. We call it the Know Before You Owe Private Student Loan Act. It would require private student loan lenders to confirm the potential borrower's enrollment status and cost of attendance. The bill would also require institutions to counsel students about the difference between Federal and private student loans. Many students just don't know the difference.

The come-on is, listen, we have only one sheet of paper you have to fill out and you will get a private loan or do you want to go through five sheets of paper over here for the Federal Government? This is easier. Easier, yes, but a debt that is going to be much more serious for you in years to come.

Last week, the attorneys general from 22 States wrote to Members of the House and Senate asking that Congress fix the so-called 90 10 loophole. The 90 10 rule, as it is currently written, requires for- profit colleges to receive at least 10 percent of their revenue from something other than the Federal Government--10 percent. But current law considers Federal sources only those funds from the Department of Education's title IV Federal financial aid programs, which includes Pell grants and federally guaranteed student loans. Other Federal subsidies for students, such as GI bill funds and the Department of Defense tuition assistance, aren't counted.

The attorneys general across America once again are ahead of Congress. They recognize that including GI bill and DOD funds will eliminate the powerful incentive the for-profit colleges have to recruit veterans and Active military in order to comply with the 90 10 rule.

Holly Petraeus is the wife of General Petraeus. Her husband is a true American hero. She has stood by his side through all his military assignments, dearly loves the military and their families. She works for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her specialty is to find those rip-off institutions that are going after veterans to try to soak up their GI bill benefits for a worthless education.

How did we reach this point? Why are we, at this moment in time, where we are--facing this student loan debt bomb. Years ago, with widespread reports of waste, fraud, and abuse in the for-profit college sector, Congress created the 85 15 rule to weed out fraudulent fly-by- night schools that relied almost entirely on taxpayer dollars. The 85 15 rule said a school could take in no more than 85 percent of its revenue from the Federal Government. The other 15 had to come from other sources. It worked, and many of the worst schools, fortunately, closed.

In 1998, the rule was loosened to 90 10--90 percent Federal subsidy. Now we see we need to return to the original intent of the law and crack down on these for-profit schools that are taking advantage of veterans, servicemembers, and students across the board.

In January, Senator Harkin and I introduced the Protect Our Students and Taxpayers Act--the POST Act--that will make several changes to the 90 10 rule. To better protect the students and our taxpayer dollars, the POST Act would reinstate the original 85 15 ratio, and the bill would change the definition of what is considered Federal revenue.

This may sound like bureaucratic gobbledygook, but let's get to the bottom line. If an institution needs to rely on the Federal Treasury for 90 percent of their revenue to exist as a school, there is a serious question about whether they are a real school. If the students make no contribution--or only 10 percent toward their education--then, frankly, what they are doing is just milking the Federal Treasury to keep the lights on at their school. I might add, these for-profit schools are highly profitable. Some of the biggest investment counselors and

managers in America invest in these schools because they are money machines. They bring their money directly from the Federal Government, with no guarantee that students will end up with an education.

The numbers I return to time and again tell the story. Ten percent of students finishing high school--10 percent--end up in for-profit schools--10 percent. Yet these for-profit schools eat up to 25 percent of all Federal aid to education. They are sucking in the Pell grants and the Stafford loans and then--hang on--they have a student loan default rate almost twice the level of other colleges and universities. What does that tell us? They have come up with an economic model which reaches deep in the Treasury to bring in money to keep the lights on and to pay their CEOs very generous salaries. They are also, of course, loaning money to students, and those students are defaulting, unable to repay their student loans at twice the rate of other colleges and universities.

You might say to yourself: Well, Senator, if that is the case, why don't you do something about it? The problem is the for-profit school industry in America is one of the most politically wired industries in this country. They have friends in high places, and it is very difficult to get reform legislation through the House or the Senate when they are so politically connected. Yet Senator Harkin and I believe it is worth the effort, and we are going to ask our colleagues to join us in that effort.

What is worse is that students are aggressively recruited to attend these colleges, lured into taking out massive amounts of debt and may not even graduate. Think about that. A study published earlier this year by the Education Sector shows that the borrowers who drop out are more than four times more likely than those who graduate to default on their college loans because they are more likely to be unemployed and earn less when they do get a job. The dropout rates rose across all kinds of colleges, but the biggest increases were found in the for- profit 4-year institutions, where a staggering 54 percent of those who had borrowed to pursue a bachelor's degree dropped out of school--more than half. The study showed 16.8 percent of dropouts defaulted on their loans compared with 3.7 percent of those who graduated.

What difference does it make to these for-profit universities? They got their money.

Alexander Brooks recently contacted my office about his student debt. Alexander is from Normal, IL, and graduated in 2006 with a degree in computer networking from ITT, a for-profit institution. Alex never got a job in his field. He drives a schoolbus to pay his rent, even though he has this so-called degree in computer networking. He said he would like to get married to his long-time girlfriend, but he doesn't want to have her share in the burden of his student loan debt.

When asked about the quality of education he received from ITT--what we will hear being advertised on the television every time we turn it on--here is what he said:

ITT fell short of preparing me for what happens after

graduation. Although the school provided me with a degree,

the program did not provide any of the necessary

certifications needed to get a job in the computer field.

Alex would like to go back to school, but he can't borrow any more money. When he graduated 6 years ago from ITT, a for-profit school, his total loan balance was $40,000. That was when he graduated. Six years later, his balance is $50,000. Six years of payments, falling further and further behind. His private student loans have interest rates up to 9.25 percent, almost double the Federal student loan rate.

Alex isn't alone. Many of his fellow students from ITT have the same trouble repaying their loan. ITT's 3-year cohort default rate is over 29 percent. That means that within 3 years of entering repayment status, almost one-third of students have already defaulted. In 2009, ITT received 85.8 percent of all its revenue--this for-profit school-- from the Federal student aid programs. It was the third largest recipient of GI bill funds, receiving $99 million in the school year 2010 2011. If GI bill funds and other Federal aid were counted, ITT would likely be at or close to receiving 100 percent of its revenue from the Federal Government--totally federally subsidized.

Federal student aid money is just about all that keeps this institution alive, running, generating profits, and paying handsome salaries to those who own it. What do the taxpayers get in return for this investment? More Americans with student loan debt they will never be able to pay off. That is not a good deal for taxpayers or students.

High student loan debt is not limited to for-profit college students. Students at private nonprofit institutions graduate with an average of about $26,000 in debt. Students who graduate from public institutions graduated with an average debt of $15,600.

What I say back home in Illinois I hope some will listen to carefully. Education is critical for a student or person to succeed. I encourage people to pursue it but go to the low-cost alternative if they haven't made up their mind or don't have a clear goal in front of them that is reasonable. Go to their community college. Start there. Learn to what it means to go to college. They can do it at an affordable cost in their neighborhood, in their town, and then progress from the community college level to the right place for them. The students who sign up for these worthless for-profit schools or sign up for a heavy load of debt may find themselves in a terrible situation, and it is impossible for them to pursue a higher education.

We have to do something to control the cost of postsecondary education, ease the burden of student debt, and crack down on the aggressive recruiting practices used by these for-profit colleges by closing the 90 10 loophole. Congress should start by coming to an agreement on the student loan interest rate hike that will prevent the interest rates on subsidized Federal student loans from doubling.

Let me close with this because I see my colleague from Rhode Island is here. On July 1, the interest rate on Federal loans--Stafford loans--will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. For a student borrowing $20,000 over the course of a 4-year education, it means at 6.8 percent as opposed to 3.4 they will be paying back $24,000 instead of $20,000. Why do we want to dig this hole any deeper for students across America?

We have put together an alternative on the floor to keep the interest rate low. Unfortunately, the other side has objected. I hope we can work out a reasonable bipartisan way to keep interest rates on student loans at a lower level. We owe it to these families and to these students.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Would the Chair remind me of the pending business?

The farm bill; is that correct? The Agriculture bill?

I was advised of that, and I wanted to double-check.

Three weeks ago we passed a milestone in U.S. agriculture. The U.S. Department of Agriculture celebrated its 150th birthday. I take some pride in that coming from Illinois because it was President Abraham Lincoln who created the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He called it the people's department. Among other things, it became a launch pad for the development of the United States. It was during that same period of the Lincoln Presidency that they started the land-grant college system as well as the Transcontinental Railroad. These things literally settled and united our great Nation.

Since its inception, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has played an important role supporting farmers, investing in rural communities, researching crops, diseases, production practices, increasing energy production, and helping to fight poverty.

Now the Senate is turning to the debate on the 2012 farm bill that will carry forward the vision of our government's role in agriculture for the next 5 years.

While much of the rest of the country has been struggling through a recession, agriculture in America has really remained a bright spot. We have seen record prices and record income in the farm sector.

Last year farm revenues reached $98.1 billion. Times are good, but we cannot afford to forget for a moment that there is inherent risk in farming--risks that many other business do not face. Droughts, floods, wind damage, rain, and pests are just a few of the risks farmers must cope with on a year-to-year basis. Because of the nature of these risks associated with farming and the important role farmers play in food production, the Federal Government, since the days of President Franklin Roosevelt, has long provided a safety net to help farmers in the worst of times. But the need for a safety net must be balanced every time we have a farm bill with the realistic appraisal of the risk facing farmers and acknowledging the resources available from the Federal Government.

The Agriculture Committee, under the leadership of Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who has done an extraordinary job with Senator Roberts, the ranking Republican, in bringing this bill to the floor, and the broader agriculture community deserve credit for stepping up to find savings in this farm bill, to cut subsidies, and to make sure those savings are dedicated toward good programs and deficit reduction. They make real reforms in agricultural programs. The bill on the floor is a huge step forward in putting our agriculture policy on the right track in light of the fiscal challenges we face. It reforms several titles to help producers better manage their risk, makes key investments in energy and research, ensures programs are in place to help our rural communities grow, and assists those who need to put food on the table. It does all this, and, to the credit of the Agriculture Committee, it still manages to save $23 billion over the next 10 years against what we had projected spending before this bill was introduced.

Gone are the outdated direct payments that went to farmers even when they were having record positive income years. To replace direct payments, the Agriculture Committee has proposed the new Agriculture Risk Coverage Program, known as ARC. ARC is a market-oriented program to build on the principles of the ACRE Program that I authored in the last farm bill and was expanded on in the Aggregate Risk and Revenue Management Act I joined along in with Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator Thune, and Senator Lugar last year.

The biggest change introduced by the ARC Program is that to get a payment, you have to have an actual loss. That may sound odd to people who are observing this from the outside, but this is a fundamental shift in agricultural policy and I think a very wise one. ARC does not guarantee a profit, and it does not make the farmer completely whole, but it smoothes out the downturns and provides the producer time to shift to a new market condition.

Crop insurance protects farmers within any given year. The ARC Program is designed to help manage risk when there are repeated years of low prices or low yields. In other words, it makes the payments when they are needed. And even better, the shift to ARC saves the Federal Government about $15 billion. I congratulate Senator Stabenow for this extraordinary savings as well as many other changes within the bill.

Other portions of the bill make long-term investments that will help strengthen agriculture. The bill increases mandatory spending and reauthorizes and expands several programs in agricultural research. It is a small part of the Agriculture bill but a critically important part of expanding agriculture in America.

This bill creates the new Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, which leverages public dollars to generate private investment. These investments are going to be important to Illinois producers and major research institutions such as the University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University, and the Peoria Agriculture Lab, as well as several other universities across our State.

The energy title includes mandatory funding for programs to expand bio-based manufacturing, advanced biofuels, and renewable energy. These

programs are going to help companies in my State, such as Archer Daniels Midland and Patriot Renewable Fuels. They are going to be able to process and manufacture products in rural America. There are many examples in Illinois of new markets being developed and new jobs being created in rural areas because of the growth of the bio-based industry.

The bill reforms the conservation title to streamline programs and finds additional savings by limiting the number of acres that can participate in the CRP or Conservation Reserve Program.

I have some concerns with these cuts and believe our most environmentally sensitive lands need to stay out of production, but I understand that the committee had a tough assignment to balance our policies with the need to reduce the deficit. This also holds true when it comes to nutrition, and I would like to say a word about the nutrition programs in this bill.

You can almost argue that this is a nutrition and agriculture bill. But it is the farm bill, and it includes many critical nutrition programs.

SNAP is the old Food Stamp Program. It helps those most impacted by the current recession continue to feed their families. You cannot really improve your situation in life if you are hungry. The committee bill takes some steps to reduce fraud in SNAP, and I heartily endorse that. We cannot really argue against those. But I am concerned about rumblings from other Members considering amendments to cut the program more fundamentally and alter the way SNAP works.

Let's be clear. We should not be cutting food assistance at a time when we are setting record poverty levels. In 2010 the United States set a new record with 15.1 percent of the population living in poverty. That is over 46 million people in our country. For them, SNAP, or the Food Stamp Program, is a lifeline.

I invite my colleagues who are anxious to cut these programs to go visit the local pantry, whether it is run by the church or whether it is a food bank in your area, and watch the people coming through the door. Some of them are very poor. Some of them are very elderly. Some of them are coming from work or going to work; they just do not make enough money to feed their families. Now is not the time to cut food assistance for American families. If you need more savings, I encourage my colleagues to look somewhere else in this bill.

While the Agriculture Committee bill makes major reforms, there is still more that can be done. The bill makes no changes to the Sugar Program that forces consumers in America to pay higher prices at the store and costs us jobs in America. I plan to support an effort from several of my colleagues to make some relatively minor changes that will benefit both consumers and businesses.

There is another area that needs further reform. It is the area of crop insurance. Crop Insurance Program costs have risen dramatically over the last several years, even when farm income was rising dramatically. Just last year the Federal Government spent more than $7.4 billion in crop insurance premium support. This does not even account for the amount sent to crop insurance companies--the companies that actually sell the crop insurance--to simply sell the policies. Incidentally, by selling those policies, they get a 14-percent return-- not a bad deal.

However, the crop insurance title sees the largest single expansion of any title in the farm bill, without making major efforts to rein in the costs. We can do better. I have joined with my Republican colleague, Senator Tom Coburn, to find additional savings in this title. In our opinion, it is not unreasonable to ask the wealthiest and most prosperous farmers in America to pay a little more for their crop insurance. Right now the Federal Government is subsidizing 62 percent of premium costs for crop insurance. For those who are making over $750,000 a year, a slight reduction in that Federal subsidy is not hard to explain, at least from where I am standing.

I commend my colleagues on the Agriculture Committee for sending us this bipartisan bill. It is a safety net for producers, makes investments in rural America, research, and energy development, protects nutrition programs, and actually cuts spending.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in a bipartisan fashion to debate and pass the 2012 farm bill. I hope they will all join us in voting for the motion to proceed.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 12 minutes.

Mr. President, let me speak today about two recent CBO reports and what they portend for the economy and for policy that we might want to make in the Congress. CBO, of course, is the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and from time to time it looks at economic conditions and presents studies or issues reports about the state of our economy based upon legislation the Congress has adopted.

There are two recent reports that I think suggest some very dire news for this country unless we in the Congress are willing to take some action. The first was a couple of weeks ago, and it dealt with the so- called fiscal cliff, the problem that will occur with the combination of two things automatically happening unless Congress and the President act.

The first is the automatic across-the-board cuts or sequestration that will affect both defense and nondefense spending to the tune of $109 billion next year, something which the Secretary of Defense has said would be ``devastating'' and ``catastrophic'' for our national security. That is the first problem. The Congressional Budget office said the combination of the sequestration with the second item, which is the automatic tax increase, which is a $4.5 trillion tax increase that begins on January 1, the combination of those two will put this country back into recession.

CBO projected the growth rate next year to be only about one-half of 1 percent. That, of course, is devastating for not just the economy but for job creation, for businesses, for families and the like.

The second recent report of the CBO just came out. It is a report that talks about the surging debt of the United States Government and talks about the probability of sudden fiscal crisis. So we have a combination of the potential for going back into recession, combined with the probability of sudden fiscal crisis because of the amount of debt the Federal Government is taking on.

Because this second report just came out, let me refer to some things that have been said about that, primarily in the Wall Street Journal in a piece on June 5 called ``Obama's Debt Boom.'' I will just quote a few lines from this editorial in the Wall Street Journal. It says:

The CBO's long-term budget outlook notes that Federal debt

held by the public--

That is the part we have to pay back--

will surge to 70 percent of the economy by the end of this

year.

Which is the highest in the history of the country except during World War II.

I think that is about $49,000 or $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. They point out that under the present trend the debt will hit 90 percent of GDP by 2022. Then it balloons to 109 percent by 2026.

What does this mean in practical terms? Here is a quotation from the Wall Street Journal about the CBO projection:

We have never been deficit scolds, preferring to focus on

the more important policy priorities of economic growth and

spending restraint. But the Obama era is taking America to a

place it has never been. Inside of a decade the country will

have a debt-to-GDP ratio well into the 90 percent to 100

percent danger zone where economists say the economy begins

to slow and risks mount.

CBO notes . . . that this level of debt increase increases

the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which

investors would lose confidence in the government's ability

to manage its budget and the government would thereby lose

its ability to borrow at affordable rates.

How bad is it? In the absolute worst-case scenario, CBO

says debt would exceed 250 percent of GDP in 2035. At that

point, CBO's economic model breaks, because so much debt is

so far outside ``historical experience'' and the CBO's

``assumptions might no longer be valid.''

That is where we are headed if we don't do something about it.

Interestingly, what CBO assumed in order to reach these conclusions is that tax collections would continue to hold to the post-1972 historical average of 18 percent of GDP. The point is we are not talking about raising taxes in order to effect this. They are assuming we will have revenues of a historical level of 18 percent of GDP. The problem is not the tax collections; in other words, the problem is the excess spending. They point out that, of course, excess spending is primarily a factor of the entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They point out that the biggest of all those is in Medicare.

Then the Wall Street Journal concludes this way:

This is where the tax burden comes in, and on that score

CBO admits that ``to the extent that additional tax revenues

were generated by boosting marginal tax rates--

This is what President Obama proposed, remember--

those ``higher tax rates would discourage people from working

and saving, further reducing output and income.'' So even the

Keynesians who dominate CBO admit that there are costs in

lower growth . . .

If they raise tax rates as the President has proposed.

This is, in effect, the most predictable crisis in history. So we have the combination of the CBO report talking about the fiscal cliff-- what happens if both the sequestration and the automatic tax increases go into effect--combined with the most recent report about the debt, and we can see the United States is headed for a disaster without intervention by the Congress and the President.

Just one thing. The Director of CBO put it this way:

The explosive path of Federal debt . . . underscores the

need for large and timely policy changes to put the Federal

Government on a sustainable fiscal course.

What has the President and the Democratic majority in the Senate suggested? We turned to Jay Carney, who had a press conference Monday. He is the spokesman for the President. He said that ``the President is continuing to work with his team on potential new ideas.''

I would like for him to work with the Congress because we have had a lot of ideas. The House of Representatives passed almost 30 bills that deal with this, and they range all the way from the Keystone Pipeline, which immediately puts 20,000 people to work, easing environmental regulations, offshore oil exploration, and so on. So we would love to have him work with the Congress, rather than this anemic to-do list he has proposed, which, obviously, would not provide any relief.

The bottom line is that as was reported in a story by the Associated Press, by Andrew Taylor, I think. As he said, after talking about the bills passed by the House of Representatives: ``Democrats will try to stop Republicans from forcing a vote on it in the Senate.''

What he is talking about is the vote the House of Representatives intends to have before long that would extend the current Tax Code, so there is certainty in tax rates, and businesses and families don't have to worry about this $4.5 trillion tax increase. The Democrats will try to stop Republicans from forcing a vote on it in the Senate.

Why would the Democratic leader not want to have a vote on whether to extend the current tax rates as opposed to having an increase in taxes of $4.5 trillion? Actually, there are a lot of folks--leaders in the President's party, people who have worked with him--who have said it would be a good idea to extend those tax cuts. In fact, the President himself said so when he extended them for 2 years, along with the support from Congress, on December 1 year ago. He said not to do so would harm economic growth. He was exactly right then, and he is right now.

As a matter of fact, we had a better GDP growth back then than we do now. If that would have been harmful then, it would be more harmful now. His belief then is adhered to by people who have worked with him and former leaders. For example, former Democratic President Bill Clinton suggested Tuesday--yesterday--that Congress temporarily extend all the Bush-era tax cuts. That includes the tax cuts for the wealthy. Remember, the Bush tax cuts applied across the board. They applied to everybody. The President has said that is fine but not for the wealthy.

What President Clinton said is, no, the best thing would be for all of those tax cuts to be extended. I will quote what the former President said:

What I think we need to do is to find some way to avoid the

fiscal cliff, to avoid doing anything that would contract the

economy now.

He was asked if that meant extending tax cuts, and he said:

They will probably have to put everything off until early

next year. That's probably the best thing to do right now.

Then the President's former adviser, who is an economics professor, Larry Summers, said today that Congress should temporarily extend the Bush-era tax cuts. He said:

The real risk to this economy is on the side of slowdown .

. . and that means we've got to make sure that we don't take

gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year.

He said that on MSNBC's ``Morning Joe'' program. He said: ``That's gotta be the top priority.''

So here you have Larry Summers, former adviser to President Clinton on economic matters, and former President Bill Clinton, both of whom have said we need to extend these tax policies today in order to avoid further damage to our economy tomorrow--exactly what the President himself said when these tax rates were extended a year and a half ago.

I just note this from another Associated Press story regarding the comments by President Clinton. As they say:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and others have

warned that letting both events occur--

That is to say, the sequestration and the automatic tax increases--

would suck so much out of the economy that it could spark a

renewed recession next year.

That is when they refer to the statement of President Clinton that we need to find a way to avoid that fiscal cliff and that would include extending the tax cuts.

The reality is we have somewhat of a consensus beginning to develop that it would be a wise thing for the country to retain current tax policies and not allow this big tax increase, to avoid the sequester or the across-the-board cuts that otherwise would affect both defense and nondefense; and if we don't do those things, according to CBO, the nonpartisan office that advises the Congress, we are likely to go back into a recession with growth that would be only one-half of 1 percent of our GDP next year.

Let me conclude by referring to another article in the Wall Street Journal, dated June 5, entitled ``Defense Chiefs Signal Job Cuts.''

Here we are talking about the employers of people in the defense industries that are predicting that if we don't do something about sequester, they are going to have to begin laying off people. The article begins with this quotation:

U.S. defense contractors are preparing to disclose mass job

cutbacks ahead of November elections if Congress fails to

reach a deficit-reduction deal by then, industry officials

said.

One of the people quoted is Robert Stevens, chairman of Lockheed Martin, a big contractor with the Defense Department. He said:

It is quite possible that we will need to notify employees

in the September and October timeframe that they may or may

not have a job in January, depending upon whether

sequestration does or doesn't take effect.

One of the reasons is a Federal law that requires employers to provide this notice--the Worker Adjustment and Retaining and Notification Act, known as the WARN Act, which requires companies to notify employees in advance of mass layoffs or plant closings--if they have more than 50 or more employees, for example. One thing Mr. Stevens said is that it doesn't just affect the big companies such as his but also all these suppliers, people who have to provide the pieces or components of products that they end up putting together. They would have to be notified because they are not going to have subcontracts next year.

One of the industry officials said sequestration is already here. What he meant by that was the reality is that businesses are having to make decisions now. This talk in the Senate about we will somehow be able to deal with this in the lameduck session after the election is simply not true. I suggest to my colleagues in the House and in the Senate that if we try to wait until after the election, I think our constituents, knowing what is happening--some of whom will probably have gotten job notices that they may be subject to termination because of the automatic across-the-board cuts, known as sequester--I think they may be sending a message to us this fall and, therefore, it behooves us to act before rather than after the fact.

There has been talk today about what the Wisconsin recall election meant. I think one thing it must have meant is that people may complain about some of the decisions that are made when there are tough decisions, but they want people who are elected to do something about the problems, to act, have some courage, tackle the

tough problems. Even if they don't totally agree with the solutions, I think they respect political leaders who are willing to do that. Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin, took a lot of heat, but he took the bull by the horns and tried to solve a problem and, as a result of the things they were able to do, the fiscal situation in Wisconsin is much better than had they not taken those actions.

That is what we in Congress need to learn. The people understand we have a big debt crisis facing us, which is confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office. They understand there is a huge risk of another recession because of the twin problems of the biggest tax increase in the history of the country coming our way January 1 and this sequestration that also occurs on January 1. They would like us to do something about that. I think what they resent is politicians saying after the election we will take it up and begin thinking about it. First of all, that is too late for a lot of people whose jobs depend upon it, and it makes for a very inefficient way of running the government.

Secondly, I think political leaders owe their constituents the ideas they would like to put into effect. We don't wait and hide the ball from our constituents, refusing to tell them what we think until after the election. The idea of a democratic republic is people stand for office by saying: This is what I would do to solve our problems. Do you like it or not? If the voters say, yes, we think that is a good idea, they elect us and expect us to follow through on it. If they don't like our ideas, they elect the other person. But if we hide the ball and say we are not going to take votes in the Senate because we don't want to put Members on record because then the voters might know what they are thinking and they might not like it and not elect them, that is obviously a lack of political courage. It also runs counter to what the fundamental concept of elections is all about.

I suggest that what we ought to do is tackle these two issues now, not wait until after the election. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate to find a way to save the $109 billion that needs to be saved in order to avoid the sequester for next year. This process will have to be undergone, undertaken, every year for the next 10 years because we have promised the voters we would save a total of $1.2 trillion.

So how will we do it next year? Well, there are any number of ways. Senators McCain, Ayotte, myself, Chambliss, Graham, and Cornyn, and some others have introduced legislation that says, well, here is a way you can save the $109 billion next year: Get half of it by simply extending the President's own pay freeze for many Federal employees through the middle of 2014, and the other half, instead of replacing every single Federal worker who retires or leaves the Federal workforce, only replace two out of the three.

Everybody talks about how wonderful the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Commission were. Well, the Simpson-Bowles Commission recommended hiring one new Federal employee for every three who leave the workplace. We double that. We say, well, let's hire two of the three back. The combination of just those two things would result in saving $109 billion.

If you don't like that way to save money, there are many other ways to do so, and there are revenues from the sale of Federal property, for example, that could also be put on the table. So there are many ways to do this. But let's get about it.

Why aren't we doing it? Well, the majority leader and the President say the only way they would consider doing this is if we also raise a bunch of taxes, and their wonderful idea about raising taxes is a tax on millionaires. Here is the problem with that. The very people we want to create the jobs are the businesspeople who pay these taxes.

According to President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, that Department says 80 percent of the people who would be subject to this millionaires' tax are business owners--the very people who need the money to hire the workers to put the economy back in good shape.

When Senator Lindsey Graham asked Defense Secretary Panetta: Wouldn't sequestration be like shooting ourselves in the foot, he said: No, Senator, it would be like shooting ourselves in the head.

I submit that raising taxes on the exact people to whom we are looking to create jobs is the same thing. That is the reason Republicans have said that is the wrong way to come up with this $109 billion.

The whole idea of the Budget Control Act was to control spending, not to raise taxes. Since there are so many ways in which this government's $3 trillion-plus budget can save money, I don't think we have to turn to something that would itself have a negative impact on economic growth; namely, raising taxes. So that has been the reason this hasn't been taken up.

One side insists we have to raise taxes in order to deal with this sequestration problem. The other side says: No, we don't have to do that at all. Let's sit down and work together and find a resolution for this problem, and let's get it done before the end of the year. At that point it is too late for a lot of people who will have lost their jobs.

By the way, some of these industry people have told us some of the sole-source suppliers or subcontractors would probably end up taking bankruptcy because their orders could not be filled due to the uncertainty that a contract was there. So we could have a great deal of damage to the economy.

In fact, the estimate is--if sequestration or across-the-board cuts occur--in the Defense industry alone we are talking about 1 million jobs lost. Remember how many jobs were created last month? I think it was 69,000 jobs were created last month. Compare that to losing 1 million jobs, and you can see the significance of what the Congressional Budget Office was talking about. This is a fiscal cliff.

We cannot allow sequestration to occur, and we cannot allow these big tax increases to occur without understanding the damage that will do to the economy. They said it is going to put us back in a recession. That is before the report they just released on the increasing debt burden of this country.

So, Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, the evidence is here. Leaders such as former President Clinton and economist Larry Summers and, of course, many other economists have said the best thing to do is to keep the tax rates where they are. Don't raise them. Resolve this sequestration issue so we don't have that hanging over our heads, and then look for other ways to boost job growth and economic productivity. That is the way to get out of the recession. That is the way to help families. Ironically, at the end of the day, a growing economy, producing more wealth, produces more tax revenues for the Federal Government, and that helps us deal with the big debt we have accumulated.

So I think everybody agrees economic growth is ultimately the best way to get out of the government's fiscal problem. But it also, of course, is precisely the way for businesses and families to prosper.

I hope colleagues in both the House and Senate--both Democrats and Republicans--can see their way clear to respond to this crisis--this utterly predictable crisis--and to deal with this problem sooner rather than later, exercising the courage our constituents would like to have us exercise and thereby representing them in the way they deserve to be represented.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, the bad news keeps coming. Europe is in dire straits, with the debt-riddled economies of Greece and now Spain threatening the future of the continent's economic union. There is real concern that this debt-fueled contagion in Europe will undermine our economy as well, and our economy cannot take too many more hits.

The unemployment rate went back up to 8.2 percent last month. Only 69,000 net new payroll jobs were created. That is barely keeping up with population growth and is hardly the type of robust job growth that will be the foundation of a lasting and meaningful economic recovery. Now, we should have seen this coming. The minutes of the Federal Reserve's most recent monetary policymaking meeting make numerous mention of uncertainties surrounding fiscal policy and that those uncertainties are a risk to the economic outlook.

Fed policymakers noted that ``they generally saw the U.S. fiscal situation also as a risk to the economic outlook; if agreement is not reached on a plan for the federal budget, a sharp fiscal tightening could occur at the start of 2013.'' They concluded that ``uncertainty about the trajectory of future fiscal policy could lead businesses to defer hiring and investing'' and ``uncertainty about the fiscal environment could hold back both household spending on durable goods and business capital expenditures.''

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office reminded us yet again what the consequences will be to our economy if we fail to get our debt under control. According to one of their analyses, absent serious reform of entitlement spending programs, ``Federal debt would grow rapidly from its already high level, exceeding 90 percent of GDP in 2022. After that . . . [d]ebt as a share of GDP would exceed its historical peak of 109 percent by 2026, and it would approach 200 percent in 2037.'' And that is an optimistic view. The impact of this multiplying debt will be a gross national product that is reduced by 4.5 percent in 2027 and 13.5 percent in 2037.

In other words, unless President Obama and his allies in the Senate get to work, Americans face a future of fewer jobs, flat or shrinking incomes, and loss of opportunity. And the sad truth is, as this chart shows, the President's allies have not gotten to work.

We have had a hearing on tax extenders but none on the AMT patch--the alternative minimum tax patch--and none on tax reform. We did have a hearing on the 2013 tax cuts. But we have had no markups on any of those, and we have had no floor consideration of any of those. Yet these are all extremely important matters.

It was no surprise, therefore, when former President Clinton stated yesterday that we are still in a recession. Economists might say that is not technically accurate, but it is certainly how most Americans feel. What did come as a surprise, however, was President Clinton's remarks on taxmageddon, the fiscal cliff the Nation faces at the end of this year. At least yesterday, it sounded as though his view was that we should do a complete 180 and race away from this cliff, extending in full the tax relief enacted by President Bush and extended by President Obama in 2010. Several weeks ago, 41 Senate Republicans made a similar request of the Senate's majority leader, Senator Reid. This fiscal cliff is unquestionably contributing to our fiscal crisis and slowing the economy by creating enormous uncertainty for taxpayers and businesses.

Absent action to extend this tax relief, Americans will be hit with a $310 billion tax increase next year alone; 26 million middle-income families will owe $92 billion in alternative minimum tax when filing their returns 1 year from now; a family of four earning $50,000 will get hit with a $2,183 tax hike; a small business owner will face a top marginal tax rate hike of 17 percent. That is catastrophic. The number of farmers who will face the death tax will rise by 2,220 percent. The number of small business owners who will face the death tax will rise by 900 percent. There should be no higher priority for the President and the Congress than addressing these tax increases.

Yesterday, President Clinton seemed to agree, arguing that we should act now, not after the elections, to avoid the fiscal cliff. At a minimum, he concluded that a temporary extension of current tax relief is in order. To quote former President Clinton:

They will probably have to put everything off until early

next year. That's probably the best thing to do right now.

I understand that the minority leader of the Senate and the Speaker of the House have now called for a 1-year extension, during which time we should do tax reform. That makes sense. And I am committed, as the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, to do tax reform and hopefully bring both sides together, for once in a long time, to do what is in the best interest of this country.

President Clinton further argued:

What I think we need to do is to find some way to avoid the

fiscal cliff, to avoid doing anything that would contract the

economy now, and then deal with what's necessary in the long-

term debt-reduction plan as soon as they can, which

presumably will be after the election.

Now, channeling Gilda Radner, and presumably following a dressing down by President Obama's campaign team, President Clinton tells us, ``Never mind.''

But President Clinton knew what he was saying. One thing I can say, knowing him as well as I do, President Clinton is a very smart man. He was making an elementary point, one that the President, President Obama, seemed to agree with when he was not running for election on a platform that single-mindedly obsesses over raising taxes on families with incomes over $250,000.

President Clinton, not wanting to further undermine our economy, recommended a short-term extension of all the tax relief. That is precisely what President Obama agreed to at the end of 2010. Given our tepid economic growth and job creation and the threat from Europe, common sense would dictate a similar course today--certainly, if the alternative is a $310 billion tax increase.

But today President Obama is running for reelection, and tax relief for the so-called rich would undermine his message of wealth redistribution. Failure to extend this tax relief, though, is not an option.

Just this morning another Obama supporter, a former Director for the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, said:

The real risk to this economy is on the side of slowdown .

. . and that means we've got to make sure that we don't take

gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year. That's

gotta be the top priority.

The former Director of President Obama's Office of Management and Budget concluded that what he estimates to be a $500 billion tax increase would be so large that ``the economy could be thrown back into a recession.''

According to the magazine, The Economist, the Congressional Budget Office has found that the combined effects of the sequester and the expiring tax relief would add up to 3.6 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2013. In a $15 trillion economy, that would be a hit to GDP of $540 billion, which would surely tip us toward recession and even more job losses.

The question the people of Utah and citizens around the country are asking themselves is, What is the holdup? If extending this tax relief is essential to providing families and businesses with the certainty and security necessary for economic growth, why are Senate Democrats refusing to take it up? Why is the President not pushing for immediate action to avoid this fiscal cliff?

Let me suggest an answer. The President wants to drag this out until after this election. Even if that means months of additional pain for America's families and a real hit to our economy, it will serve his long-term goal, a goal that he dares not announce until after the election. President Obama does not want the precedent of extending this tax relief for everyone because, ultimately, his liberal base does not want it extended for anyone.

The President and his advisers know our debt is unsustainable. Their base will not allow for any serious changes to spending policy, and tax increases on the wealthy alone are not adequate to get our fiscal house in order. The only solution, one that Hyde Park and Pennsylvania Avenue are loathe to discuss openly, are tax increases on everybody.

This is Matt Bai, writing last year in the New York Times:

If Democrats are serious about reversing the policy of the

Bush years, then they will probably have to be willing to

make a case for eliminating all the tax cuts, not just those

for the wealthiest Americans. And they may have to come up

with some kind of more comprehensive plan for modernizing the

entire tax code, in order to persuade voters that even if

some taxes go up, they might still come out ahead.

Ezra Klein, the liberal blogger at the Washington Post, put it this way:

We cannot fund anything close to the government's

commitments if we don't raise taxes, or if we let only the

Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000 expire.

Though he is now persona non grata in President Obama's camp, just a few weeks ago President Clinton was echoing this recommendation of tax increases for all.

This is President Clinton:

This is just me now, I'm not speaking for the White House--

I think you could tax me at 100 percent and you wouldn't

balance the budget. We are all going to have to contribute to

this, and if middle class people's wages were going up again,

and we had some growth to the economy, I don't think they

would object to going back to tax rates [from] when I was

president.

With due respect to our former President, I do think he was speaking for the White House, and I do think most Americans would object to a tax hike. That is why President Obama has decided to lay low rather than lead. The American people are not going to accept this. We live in a republic, and it is fundamentally illegitimate, on an issue of this magnitude, for a person running for President of the United States to put these decisions off until a lameduck session of Congress when he can no longer be held to account by the American people.

It is not only an economic imperative that we extend this tax relief, it is demanded by our constitutional commitment to representative democracy. To borrow from Justice Scalia:

The American people love democracy and the American people

are not fools.

If the President and his campaign team think they can punt this issue into the fall, they are sorely mistaken. The American people will voice their displeasure with this failure to lead in November. President Clinton got it right the first time yesterday. The fiscal cliff must be addressed now. We cannot wait until later in the year. Our economy is struggling. American families are treading water. We have tried it their way for almost 4 years.

We have tried a $850 billion stimulus. We have tried ObamaCare, which was

also supposed to be a jobs program. We have tried Dodd-Frank. It is time to try something else.

There is no greater jobs program that Congress and the President could pursue than a permanent extension of the tax relief signed by Presidents Bush and Obama. It would provide enormous confidence to America's businesses and families at a time when confidence is sorely needed. This issue is not going away. I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass tax relief for all Americans sometime this summer.

We all realize we are in election mode. Maybe I realize that more than most. The fact is, we cannot punt this anymore. We cannot kick it down the road. We are going to have to find a means and a way whereby we extend this tax relief and then spend the next year working on tax reform and hopefully a bipartisan tax reform bill that everybody here can support.

So far this year just about everything the majority leader has brought up for and on behalf of Democrats is to protect the sitting 23 Democrats who are up for reelection this year. I don't blame the leader for wanting to protect his fellow Democrats. That is, after all, maybe part of the job of the leader. On the other hand, there are things that are even more important, such as the future welfare of our country, such as jobs that are not being created. They are not being created because we have no creators in the White House. It takes a President to lead on these issues.

I suggest to President Obama he would have a much better chance of reelection if he would lead on some of these issues and if he would go along with putting off these tax increases and committing Democrats and Republicans to coming up with a bipartisan reform of this awful, despicable, unworkable Tax Code. It might be one of the few ways we can bring people together. It might be one of the few ways we can turn this country around in the short term.

I think the minority leader and the Speaker of the House have something here. We ought to do this and make it the main focal point of our existence as Members of the Senate and Members of the House of Representatives. If we do this, we might even find that we can get along again. We might even find that we can work together. And we might even find the President can lead for a change, which would be a pleasant change from what I have seen over the last number of years.

I happen to like the President. I do not agree with him. Yes, I would like to replace him. But I like him personally. I believe if the President would lead here and would make this a focal point he would have a better chance in this election. Not that I want him to be successful, but at least he would have a better chance.

Deep down the American people believe nothing is being done by the White House, by this body, and throughout the country. I yearn for the day when Democrats and Republicans can get along with each other again, when we really put the country first rather than reelection first, when we really look at each other and say: You know, I like him or her. I think I can work with them. It would be wonderful if we would do that.

This is a pretty fair suggestion: Keep the tax cuts alive until we reform the tax system--this bloated, unworkable, stupid Tax Code. I actually believe it could be a way of making us all work together and making us all do so in the best interests of our country. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

I hope my colleagues on both sides will go along with doing something that makes sense--like this. I believe in these suggestions we have the makings of something that would not only help our country but help all of us to get along with each other and work in the best interests of our country.

But I will make a final point; that is, it takes Presidential leadership to make major changes like this, and we do not have that right now.

Mr. President, in remarks a few minutes ago, I stated the following:

If extending this tax relief is essential to providing

families and businesses with the certainty and security

necessary for economic growth, why are Senate Democrats

refusing to take it up? And why is the President not pushing

for immediate action to avoid this fiscal cliff?

Let me suggest an answer.

The President wants to drag this out until after the

elections. Even if that means months of additional pain for

America's families and a real hit to our economy, it will

serve his long-term goal--a goal that he dare not announce

until after the election.

President Obama does not want the precedent of extending

this tax relief for everyone, because ultimately his liberal

base does not want it extended for anyone.

The President and his advisers know that our debt is

unsustainable. Their base will not allow for any serious

changes to spending policy, and tax increases on the wealthy

alone are not adequate to get our fiscal house in order.

As support for my theory that the President could be dragging out this tax hike fight, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from the blog, ``Talking Points Memo,'' dated November 22, 2011. That blog's authors certainly are allies of President Obama and rarely does ``Talking Points Memo'' contain anything sympathetic to Republican policy positions. When it is critical of President Obama, the blog's criticisms tend to spring from the far left of the political spectrum. I ask my colleagues to ask themselves the question above: ``Why is the President not pushing for immediate action to avoid this fiscal cliff?'' and then read the article.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I withhold. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I would like to thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan for her very kind remarks. This has been a team effort. She has been a very strong leader to try to put together a bill. I thank her for her very detailed summary, title by title, of the farm bill--something a lot of us probably couldn't do, but at any rate, she has done that, and it is in the Congressional Record. I urge my colleagues to really take a look at what the distinguished chairwoman has said today because she has literally gone down every title in the farm bill. So if anybody has any questions, it is right there, and, as she has indicated, if anybody has questions of either of us, please be in contact with either us or our very able staff.

I rise today in strong support of the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012, the farm bill, and I am privileged to stand here today with Chairwoman Stabenow, who led this reform legislation through the Agriculture

Committee. It has truly been a bipartisan and a team effort. It represents the final product of numerous hearings and months of discussions as we worked to write a new farm bill during the most difficult budget climate in our Nation's recent history.

I am proud to say that we have put together a bipartisan bill that strengthens and preserves the safety net for our farmers and ranchers in rural America, while providing $23.6 billion--$24 billion, as a politician's counting--in deficit reduction under this bill reported by the committee on a bipartisan vote of 16 to 5.

Let me repeat that. The Senate Agriculture Committee voluntarily wrote and reported a bill that provides $23.6 billion in deficit reduction. It is a bill that represents real reform. We are the first authorizing committee to produce those kinds of mandatory budget savings, and it was voluntary.

We all remember the supercommittee that tried very hard to achieve deficit reduction. The supercommittee was really not that super--not because of those people individually but because of the circumstances. Well, we are a supercommittee. We came up with $23.6 billion. I don't know of anybody over on the House side--perhaps I am wrong, but in the Senate we are the only folks who have really come up with real budget savings.

It also represents, as I have indicated and as the chairwoman indicated, real reform. Just listen to this. We have eliminated four commodity programs that caused farmers untold hours of preparation--go down to the Farm Service Agency and talk to the folks down there, who are hard-pressed anyway, and ask: ``Which program do I sign up for? How can I plan down the road?'' We rolled all of these commodity programs into one, while saving approximately $15 billion from the farm safety net programs. That is truly remarkable.

Twenty-three conservation programs are streamlined into 13, while saving nearly $6.4 billion. Approximately $4 billion is saved in the nutrition title, while at the same time expanding our efforts to root out fraud and abuse. Sixteen program authorizations are eliminated in the rural development title, eliminating over $1 billion of authorized spending over 10 years on top of the mandatory. Two programs are combined and another two eliminated in specialty crops. Over $200 million less in mandatory money is provided in the energy title compared to the 2008 farm bill. Five programs are eliminated in the forestry title, reducing authorizations by at least $20 million. Over 60 authorizations are eliminated from the research title, reducing authorizations by at least $770 million over 5 years. Again, that is $23.6 billion in tough mandatory savings, at least $1.8 billion in reduced discretionary authorizations, and at least 100 programs or authorizations that have been eliminated.

This is a reform bill. No other committee in the House or Senate has voluntarily undertaken programmatic and funding reforms at this level in this budget climate--no other committee. Believe me, it would have been much easier to write a baseline bill with no change in CBO spending projections. We could have fulfilled everyone's request on the committee and in the Senate, but we would not have performed the duty that we were elected to perform and that our constituents expect in this budget climate and that farmers and ranchers expect and their lenders expect and all up and down Main Street throughout rural and smalltown America or, for that matter, any taxpayer or any citizen of the United States. We have reduced spending, and we have reformed programs. That is what they want, and they want us to work together, and that is what we have done. At the same time, it is a bill that strengthens and preserves our farm risk management, conservation, research, and rural community programs.

We have strengthened and preserved the Crop Insurance Program--as pointed out by the distinguished chairwoman, the No. 1 priority of virtually every producer who testified before our committee. Why? Because their banker or their lenders say: You have to have crop insurance, and you have to strengthen it, and you have to improve it. In the past, we have been using crop insurance as a bank. No, we are not going to do that anymore given the circumstances our farmers face even today in Kansas as we go through another dry spell, and also in Texas, Oklahoma, and the High Plains.

We have streamlined our commodity programs, while reducing the complexity for the producers. We have updated the acreage upon which support is based to reflect more recent cropping patterns. That is a point I wish to discuss just a little bit more.

In recent days and weeks, it has seemed there has been just a little bit of confusion here in the Capitol region. It seems that some think we should write a farm safety net program and allocate their funding by commodity group or organization, sort of like a pie chart. If all you did was listen to these groups, you would think we were robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I understand that the elimination of direct payments is a big deal to many commodities. If anybody should understand that, it should be me. As a key feature of the 1996 act, I originally authored the program at that time. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the program has been wheat, especially in Kansas. But the taxpayers have been clear in this budget climate: Why should Congress continue and defend a program based on planting acreages established over 25 years ago? That doesn't make any sense.

Yes, the elimination of direct payments means the end of many wheat payments in Kansas, but that does not mean Kansas producers will no longer have a farm safety net--quite the contrary. They will have a strong risk management program. It will just be for different crops. Why? Because when base acres were established over 25 years ago, Kansas planted over 2.8 million acres of corn, 4.2 million acres of sorghum, 1.6 million acres of soybeans, and 12.1 million acres of wheat.

Now, in the most recent 3-year period, Kansas farmers planted 4.6 million acres of corn, 2.6 million acres of sorghum, 4 million acres of soybeans, and 8.8 million acres of wheat. Why? That is 4.9 million fewer acres of wheat and sorghum and 4.2 million more acres of corn and soybeans.

Why did that happen? Why did these acreage shifts in Kansas and all over the country change like that? It occurred because farmers made those decisions, not Washington. Our producers have planted for the domestic and international market, and we have done so in a way that we do not encourage a WTO challenge. The cropping changes are much the same all throughout the Nation, especially among States represented on the Agriculture Committee.

Money is shifting among commodities because farmers are farming differently. They are becoming much more diversified throughout the States on this committee and the Nation. It is not shifting because we in Washington are intentionally picking winners and losers.

I understand some are frustrated with the decisions and changes we have in this bill. That takes place in any farm bill. Quite honestly, there are things that, if we had the funds available, the chairwoman and I both would have preferred to have done differently. But let's be blunt. This is not the 2002 or 2008 farm bill, and we do not have extra funds available.

This is not my first trip to the farm bill rodeo. I have written bills in times of budget surpluses and extra spending, and I have written farm bills in the middle of deficit cutting exercises--seven of them. Make no mistake about it, it is much easier to write a bill when we are adding money to the baseline--a whole heck-of-a-lot easier.

Nutrition groups, conservation organizations, our commodity groups, our Members of Congress want to stand by you and take the bows when you are adding money to the programs. But when it comes time to make difficult decisions and do what is right for the country by reducing spending and reforming programs, sometimes they are just not even in the same room. They are hiding in the weeds.

American agriculture today is a modern-day miracle. Every American farmer feeds you, Mr. President, and 150 other people. In America today our consumers spend less of their disposable income on food--and their market basket, OK?--than any other Nation in the world. America's farmers and ranchers provide us with the most

abundant and affordable and safest food supply on the planet. That is a speech every farm organization and commodity group and farmers and ranchers have heard over and over, but it is a speech that deserves repeating to all my colleagues over and over so they get it.

They feed our Nation. Our producers feed our country. They feed the world, a troubled and hungry world. They provide food for the food aid programs that help countries around the world send young girls to school. Sending those girls to school helps feed hope and a belief in our American ideals rather than hatred and radicalism toward our Nation. The American farmer and rancher do provide stability in a chaotic world, and in doing so national security as well.

Show me a country that can't sustain itself in terms of food supply, I will show you chaos. Read about the Mideast, Syria, Libya and what is going on over in that part of the world. So the farm program is not only a farm program, it is a program to achieve stability in the world because of the productivity of the American farmer, and our ability to do it is also a national security program.

Every year America's farmers produce more on less land using less water and fewer inputs with ever-stronger conservation practices. It is truly a modern-day miracle what the agricultural sector in America does today.

I understand some are unhappy with some of the proposals put forward in this bill. It is a farm bill. I wouldn't expect it to be any different. But I can assure you, however, if I thought we were in any way writing a bill that would make it more difficult for my State of Kansas or for the State of Michigan or any American producer to feed this Nation and this world, a bill that eliminated their safety net which destroyed their ability to protect our natural resources while also feeding the most needy in our country, I would not be standing here today supporting it. I would not do that.

If I thought it in any way could keep us from feeding 9 billion people--note that, 9 billion people who will walk this Earth in just a couple of short decades--I would oppose this bill. We are going to have to double our agricultural production to help in a humanitarian way and prevent chaos all around the world, 9 billion people.

Agriculture is the backbone of the Kansas economy, employing more than one in five Kansans. More than 65,000 farms dot the Kansas landscape with an average land size of 705 acres. These farmers and ranchers do a tremendous job of feeding a troubled and hungry world. In fact, Kansas ranks No. 1 in the Nation in the production of wheat and grain sorghum, second in cattle farms, and third in sunflowers produced. We expect that, being the Sunflower State. Cash receipts from farm marketings were greater than $12 billion, and farm product exports were in excess of $4.8 billion.

Farmers and ranchers in my State truly help feed--what we have said again and again--a troubled and hungry world, which is why I am proud of this legislation. We have worked hard to put this together. It may not be the best possible bill, but it is the best bill possible given the circumstances we face. We have performed our duty to taxpayers by cutting deficit spending while at the same time strengthening and preserving the programs so important to agriculture and rural America.

Again, we have cut mandatory spending by $23.6 billion. We have reformed, eliminated, and streamlined USDA programs to the tune of more than 100 programs and authorizations eliminated. And we have done it on a voluntary basis because in rural America you make the tough decisions. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and you do what is right when it needs to be done. When we have done it in a bipartisan fashion, that is the best way to do it.

How many times have we heard this: What on Earth is wrong back there? Why can't you join together and work together and do what is right for America and for the people? This is what this committee has done under the leadership of the chairwoman.

So I thank the chairwoman for bringing us to this point today, and let's pass this farm bill. It is good for the country, it is good for the world, it is a good bill, and we need to proceed.

I hope every Member could vote for the motion to proceed. If they have amendments they are interested in, please come to us. It is like Bob Barker said: Come on down. Come on down and talk to us. If you have a problem with the bill, we will work with you. Just let us know. OK.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, be recognized for 10 minutes when he appears on the floor. I thought he would be here by this time but he is not. At the appropriate time, I ask unanimous consent that he be recognized.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.