Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act

Mr. President, I know the Senator is the assistant leader. The majority has a lot of things to do. If he would like to finish now, I would be pleased to yield.

The American people are all worried about the direction of our country and for a good reason; they have witnessed a growing disregard for the Constitution and the limits that it places on the federal government. Our Government is a government of limited powers. In essence, I hear my friend and colleague and able advocate Senator Durbin say the question is about medical care. The question is about, he thinks, that it is unfair that some people do not buy insurance and therefore we ought to make them buy insurance. He thinks that is unfair.

We had a nearly year-long debate in this Congress, and Senator Durbin prevailed by a single vote, before Senator Brown could be confirmed to kill the health care bill. They were able to pass it through with an interim Senator by a single vote and it passed. But that is not what I and Senator Cornyn and others are here to talk about today. The point today is, Should the Supreme Court of the United States decide this question as a matter of law and principle or should they divine what they think the people want--although the polls show the American people consistently oppose this legislation and never supported it, ever, but it was rammed through anyway. So they want to say: This is important. We think it is unfair--even though the polling data shows people don't want this law--and the Supreme Court should uphold the law and shouldn't worry about a little thing like the Constitution and limited powers.

So that is what I want to talk about today. I want to affirm the duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, and that duty is to fairly and objectively interpret the Constitution and to render justice, not based on polling data and not based on congressional desire.

Polling data shows that the American people overwhelmingly think the law is an impermissible, unconstitutional regulation, so it is difficult for me to say this is such a matter that the Supreme Court has to acknowledge a minority view and approve it even if the Constitution doesn't agree. I don't think that is an argument that can be sustained, in my view.

Since the oral arguments in the case, in my view--and a lot of my colleagues share this view--the President himself, Democrats in the House and the Senate, their friends in the media and liberal government, pro-health care advocates have stepped up undignified and unjustified attacks on the Court, which seems to me to be a pretty transparent effort to try to influence the decision of an independent branch of government. It also seems to me an attempt--since I have been a student of this for some time now--to lay the groundwork and to declare that the Supreme Court is somehow illegitimate if they don't render a verdict in line with one that my colleagues think should be rendered.

I will say parenthetically that 2 years ago when this passed 60 to 40, it took 60 votes to pass it. It wouldn't pass today. It wouldn't even come close to having 60 votes today because the American people spoke and sent home a lot of people who voted for this bill when they didn't want them voting for it. That was a big deal in the election, frankly, if you want to talk about that.

So this philosophy that we hear advocated is a dangerous philosophy of law and jurisprudence. It is results-oriented. It is political, not law, and it surely is contrary to the great heritage of law that this country has been so blessed with. It may be that my colleagues are concerned because when pressed by the Supreme Court Justices during oral argument, the Solicitor General of the United States seemed to be utterly incapable of identifying any limiting principle on government power. The Solicitor General proffered various reasons why health care is unique, but not one of them was effectively grounded on any constitutional text, principle, or theory--at least in my view.

People can disagree. The Justices will have the final word on it. The nonlegal argument that the Court should not overturn a popular law suggested by many is, of course, irrelevant, not only because this health care law is, in fact, unpopular, but because popularity does not translate into constitutionality. Of course, under the popularity theory, it would be wrong for the Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, which the administration has decided is unconstitutional and refuses to defend in court, even though the law was so popular that it passed 342 to 67 in the House and 85 to 14 in the Senate. So making the popularity argument revealed the lack of legal argument. It condemns such advocates as advocates against law, not for law.

Supporters of the health care law have disdainfully and consistently dismissed the notion, and it was done during the debate, that the legislation raised serious constitutional questions. I remember the debate in the Senate. This disdain was no more starkly demonstrated than when a reporter asked then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi what the constitutional basis was for the statute, and she condescendingly replied: Are you serious?

Is our time up?

Mr. President, how long might the majority leader expect to be, and if it is possible to have consent to speak an additional 5 minutes after the majority leader.

I know the majority leader is extremely busy, and I appreciate his courtesy and respect with the difficult duty he has here.

She said: Are you serious? Well, when the Solicitor General of the United States was being grilled by the Justices, I have to say it looked serious then. It is axiomatic that the Commerce clause--which is the provision in the Constitution that the law's supporters argue gives the government the power to take over health care--was never understood to grant unlimited power to the Federal Government. The Federal Government, without doubt, is a government of limited powers.

It certainly never meant that Congress could regulate noncommerce under the power to regulate commerce. We can't regulate noncommerce when the only power the Federal Government is given is the power to regulate commerce. Give me a break.

As distinguished Judge Roger Vinson stated in his opinion in this case when he struck this bill down:

It would be a radical departure from existing law to hold

that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce

clause. If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive

individual into a commercial transaction with a third party

merely by asserting--as it was done in the Act--that

compelling the actual transaction is itself ``commercial and

economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate

commerce,'' it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress

could do almost anything it wanted . . . If Congress can

penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in

commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would

have been in vain, for it would be ``difficult to perceive

any limitation on federal power'' (Lopez), and we would have

a Constitution in name only. Surely this is not what the

Founding Fathers could have intended.

It is a serious question. The Supreme Court needs to decide it, and they don't need to have Congress trying to pressure them one way or the other.

The President of the United States, President Obama, might think that it is, in his words ``unprecedented'' or ``extraordinary'' for the Court to strike down a clearly unconstitutional statute, but it is not. The Supreme Court has a duty under the Constitution and under the powers of the judiciary to speak clearly if Congress passes a law that violates the Constitution, that assumes powers Congress does not have, and that attempts to act in ways on behalf of the Federal Government that the Constitution never gave the government the power to do. They have a duty to strike it down.

The Court's reputation would be damaged if it bows to political bullying, but it won't be damaged if it follows the Constitution. I think it is wrong to disparage and threaten the Court during the pendency of a case in order to influence the outcome. I don't have any problem with criticizing a decision if I disagree with it, but to try to politically pressure the Court I think is wrong for us to do.

These are important questions of law. I have an opinion, but the Court has a duty. That duty is to decide the case before them impartially, as a neutral umpire, and without regard to the crowd noise. I believe they will do their duty, and we all await the outcome.

I thank the Chair, and I thank the majority leader.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I want to discuss today several amendments I have to the farm bill that is now before the Senate. What might surprise many people to learn is that the overwhelming majority of funds in the farm bill are not spent on anything to do with farmers or even agriculture production. For instance, crop insurance amounts to--which is a big part of the new bill and is progress, I think--the crop insurance provisions amount to just 8 percent of what we will be spending. Horticulture is less than 1 percent. But a full 80 percent of the farm bill spending goes to the Federal food stamp program. Yet only 17 percent of the small savings that are found in this proposal comes from food stamps. Out of the $23 billion in cuts, none of which

occurs next year, out of almost $1 trillion in spending over 10 years. So about $23 billion in cuts. Most of that is taken from the farm provisions, but only 20 percent of it goes to that. At the same time, food stamp spending is virtually untouched. I believe they propose $4 billion in savings after 80 percent of the cost of this bill is in the food stamp program. The other $17 billion comes out of the 20 percent-- not the food stamps.

Overall, the legislation will spend $82 billion on food stamps next year--$82 billion, and an estimated $770 billion over the next 10 years. To put these figures in perspective--and they are so large it is difficult to comprehend--we will spend, next year, $40 billion on the Federal highway program, but $80 billion on the food stamp program.

Food stamp spending has more than quadrupled--four times. It has increased fourfold since the year 2001. It has increased 100 percent since President Obama took office, doubled in that amount of time. There are a number of reasons for this arresting trend. While the poor economy has undeniably increased the number of people who qualify for food stamps, this alone does not explain the extraordinary growth in the program.

For instance, between 2001 and 2006, food stamp spending doubled, but the unemployment rate remained around 5 percent. So from 2001 to 2006, we had a doubling of food stamps while unemployment is the same. When the food stamp program was first expanded nationwide, about 1 in 50 Americans received food stamp benefits. Today, nearly one in seven receive food stamp benefits.

We need to think about that. This is a very significant event. We need to ask ourselves, is this good policy? Is it good for America? Not only is it a question of, do we have the money, the second thing is, is it going to the right people? Is the money being expended wisely? Is it helping people become independent? Is it encouraging people to look for ways to be productive and be responsible themselves for their families? Or does it create dependency, part of a series of government programs that, in effect, are not beneficial to the people who actually benefit from them in the short term?

Three factors help explain this increase. First is that eligibility standards have been significantly loosened over time with a dramatic drop in eligibility standards in the last few years. Second, it has been the explicit policy goal of the Federal bureaucracy to increase the number of people on food stamps. Bonus pay is even offered to States that sign up more people. States administer this program.

And, third, the way the system is arranged with States administering the program but the Federal Government providing all of the money, all of it, they do not have--States do not match food stamps. States have an incentive, do you not see, to see their food stamp budget grow, not shrink, because it is more Federal money coming into the State which they pay no part of.

That means overlooking, I am afraid, I hate to say, dramatic amounts of fraud and abuse, because the enforcement and supervision is given over to the States. So I filed a modest package of food stamp reforms to the farm bill which will achieve several important goals: save taxpayer dollars, which is a good thing; reduce the deficit; achieve greater accountability in how the program is administered; confront widespread waste; direct food stamps to those who truly need them; and help more Americans achieve financial independence.

I guess I am the only person in the Senate who has ever dealt with fraud in the food stamp program. Shortly after law school, when I was a young Federal prosecutor, I prosecuted fraud in the food stamp program. Later I came back as a U.S. attorney, and we saw drug dealers selling food stamps, we saw various other manipulations of it. As attorney general of Alabama for a period, I was involved in enforcing integrity in the program. So I know the benefits food stamps play to people in desperate need. I know it is helpful. But I know, Americans know, they see it every day, that there are abuses in this program. It is the fastest growing entitlement program bar none. We need to look at it. I understand there are some who oppose even saving $4 billion over 10 years out of the food stamp program.

We are spending 80 a year. Four years ago, we were spending 40. We cannot do better than that?

Food stamps is the second largest Federal welfare program following Medicaid. If food stamp spending were returned next year to the 2007 funding level, and you agreed to increase it for 10 years at the rate of inflation, that would produce an astonishing $340 billion in savings for the U.S. Treasury. And we have to have some savings because we don't have the money to continue spending at the rate we are.

Food stamps are 1 of 17 Federal nutritional support programs and 1 of nearly 80 Federal welfare programs. So there is no confusion, these figures count only low-income support programs. They don't include Medicare, Social Security, or unemployment benefits.

Collectively, our Federal welfare programs constitute about $700 billion in Federal spending and $200 billion in State contributions to the same programs. That is about $900 billion on the Federal-State combined--most of it Federal--and $900 billion is about one-fourth of the entire Federal budget.

An individual on food stamps may receive as much as $25,000 in various forms of financial assistance for their household from the Federal Government--as much as $25,000--in addition to whatever salary they may earn in part- or full-time work, or any support they may receive from their families or communities. In other words, this is not normally the only source of income for the person.

Changes in eligibility have also eliminated the asset test for food stamp benefits, which brings me to the first of four amendments I have filed.

No. 1, let's restore the asset test for food stamps. This change has been quite significant. Through a system known as categorical eligibility, States can provide benefits to those whose assets exceed the statutory asset limit, as long as they receive some other Federal benefit. Why is that? I don't know; it makes no sense to me. If you qualify for another program, you automatically get food stamps. Categorically, you are eligible for them. One State went so far as to determine that individuals were food-stamp eligible solely because they received a brochure for another benefit program in the mail. Well, that meant there is more money from the Federal Government coming into their State, more benefits. I guess they see it as an economic benefit. It didn't cost them any money; the money came from Washington.

According to the CBO, the simple process of going back and restricting the categorical eligibility problem that is now springing up would produce $12 billion in savings for taxpayers over the next 10 years and should not eliminate a single person who qualifies for food stamps under the statutory restrictions for the program. All it would mean is that if you qualify for food stamps and fill out the proper form, you get it, like everybody else has to do.

Second, there is the heating subsidy loophole. Fifteen States are using a loophole in order to get more food stamp dollars from the Federal Government. They do this by mailing a very small check--get this--often less than a dollar a month--under the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP. Anyone who receives that check, which may be as little as a few dollars a year, becomes eligible to claim a lower income on the basis of home energy expenses--even if they don't pay those expenses.

This reform will require households that receive food stamps to provide proof of payment for their heating or cooling in order to qualify for the income deduction. If the government is paying for your heating, you should not say I need food stamps because I have a big heating bill. But this is a clever maneuver designed by States-- frankly, deliberately--to extract more money from Washington--free money for their States, and it is not good policy for America. It is not right that some States get more under the food stamps program by using this technique than others who don't use this abusive practice. Closing this loophole will produce $14 billion in savings over the next 10 years. That is a lot of money.

No. 3, let's end the bonus payments going to States for increasing the number of people who sign up. We ought to

be giving bonuses to people who identify people who are abusing the problem and bringing those down, if anything.

States currently receive bonus payments for enrolling individuals in the food stamp program. Those bonus payments highlight the perverse incentive States have to expand food stamp registration rather than to reduce fraud and help more people achieve financial independence. We need to be focusing on helping people to get work and to be more productive and to bring in more money for their families than food stamps would bring in. That is what the focus of American vitality and growth should be.

No. 4, let's implement the SAVE Program for food stamp usage. This amendment would simply require the government to use a very simple SAVE Program, similar to the E-Verify Program, to ensure that adults receiving benefits are in fact lawfully in the country. This is a commonsense thing to do at a time when we have to borrow 40 cents out of every dollar we spend in this government. We spend $3,700 billion and we take in $2,400 billion. We borrow the rest every year. We cannot afford to be providing incentives, benefits, bonuses, and payments to reward people who have entered the country illegally. We just don't have the money.

Ultimately, beyond first steps, the best way to achieve integrity in the food stamp program is to block-grant it to the States. Send so much for the program, a fair percentage to each State, and let them distribute it. This will provide States with a strong incentive to make sure each dollar is being properly spent. They don't have that today. It does no damage to a State if somebody is getting the money improperly, or getting more than they are entitled to. If a State is administering the program and some people are getting too much and others are not getting enough, then the State has an incentive to make sure the abuses stop and the aid goes to the people who need it. That is the kind of program we need in America--one that works and has incentives built in to make the program have integrity.

The House budget adopts this reform. They like to complain about the House and say the House doesn't know what they are doing. This is a commonsense reform. I am proud of what the House did. They did exactly the right thing. Senate Democrats, of course, have not even written a budget in 3 years. It has become clear that if we had gone through a financial analysis, a budget debate in this Congress, we could save a lot of money by ending the abuses in the Food Stamp Program, and it would help us do other things the government needs to do. It would also become clear that we will run out of money to pay for this program if we don't make changes soon. We are in a financial situation that is so grave that every expert has told us we are on an unsustainable path and we have to get off of it. If we don't, we can have another financial catastrophe, like in 2007, and like they are having in Europe today. That is very possible. So we have to reduce our deficit and our abusive spending.

Reforming the way we deliver welfare is the compassionate course. It is not mean-spirited to say that people who are not entitled to the benefits don't need the benefits and should not get them. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with having incentives in your program, not to see how many people you can get on food stamps but to see how many we can get to work and be productive and take care of themselves.

The result of welfare reform in 1996, if you remember that--and many of you do--was less poverty, more growth, less teen pregnancy, more work, and more people successfully caring for themselves. We have slipped back, in my opinion. We moved back from some of the progress we made from the 1996 provision.

Unfortunately, since 1996, Members in both parties have failed to protect these gains. The welfare budget has swelled dramatically. Oversight has diminished. Standards have slipped. We now find ourselves in need of welfare reform for the 21st century. We do. That is the nature of any government, where once programs are established, they go beyond rationality and need to be reformed periodically.

It is time to re-engage the national discussion over how the receipt of welfare benefits can become damaging, not merely to the Treasury but also to the recipient.

Left unattended, the safety net can become a restraint, permanently removing people from the workforce. And Federal programs, unmonitored, can begin to replace family, church, and community as a source of aid and support.

We need to reestablish the moral principle that Federal welfare should be seen as temporary assistance, not permanent support. The goal should be to help people become independent and self-sufficient.

Such reforms, made sincerely and with concern for those in need, will improve America's social, fiscal, and economic health. Empowering the individual is more than sound policy; it remains the animating moral idea behind the American experience, our national exceptionalism. We believe in individual responsibility. We believe in helping people in need, but we don't believe in creating circumstances where decent, hard-working people, who work extra and save their money, who give up vacations and going out to eat so they can take care of their family, are also required to support people who are irresponsible. That is not a healthy situation for us to be in.

We need to strike the right balance. We can help those people in need and create a government and a social assistance program in America that benefits the people we seek to benefit and benefits the State treasuries at the same time.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, political leaders on the Democratic side of the aisle are now preemptively charging the Supreme Court with judicial activism if that Court would strike down President Obama's health care law as unconstitutional. I cannot remember when such a significant threat to judicial independence was made in attempting to affect the outcome of a pending case. It is an outrageous attack on the separation of powers.

Democrats claim unless the Court rules in accordance with the policy preferences of a particular speaker, the Court's decision would be illegitimate. This is dangerous and this is wrong.

President Obama wrongly argued it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to strike down a law that a large congressional majority passed. He was wrong on the size of the majority, and he was wrong about the Supreme Court's history in striking down laws they consider unconstitutional. The President of the United States knows better because he is a former constitutional law lecturer. He should know the Supreme Court has done just that on many occasions over more than two centuries, and it is just not the case, as Democrats claim, that the Supreme Court can strike down ObamaCare only by failing to follow established commerce clause jurisprudence.

When the Judiciary Committee held a hearing last year on the constitutionality of the law, I asked whether the Supreme Court would need to overturn any of its precedents to strike down the individual mandate part of the health care reform. None of the witnesses--and most of those witnesses were selected by the majority Democrats--could identify a single precedent that would have to be struck down. No matter how many times liberals repeat the statement, it is just not so--the Supreme Court would not be an activist court if it struck down health care reform.

What is unprecedented is health care reform's infringement on personal liberty. The Constitution establishes a very limited Federal Government. But when the Supreme Court asked him the obvious question of what limit to Federal power would exist if the individual mandate were upheld, the Solicitor General, arguing for the government and in support of the constitutionality, could not and did not provide an answer.

So the Obama administration believes the Federal Government can force Americans to purchase broccoli or gym memberships, and don't believe anyone who says otherwise once we start down that road of unprecedented power of the Federal Government under the commerce clause.

Critics contend that the whole body of law allowing Federal regulation of the economy would be threatened if the Supreme Court struck down the health care reform bill. They even say that such a ruling would harm the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. That is just plain nonsense. The Supreme Court has never addressed a law like this. Striking down ObamaCare would have no effect on any other existing law.

The real change in the law--and to the country as a whole--would be if the health care reform bill were upheld as constitutional. People understand this instinctively. A recent Gallup poll found that 72 percent of Americans--including even 56 percent of people who call themselves Democrats--believe the individual mandate is unconstitutional. So they clearly would accept the legitimacy of a ruling striking down the individual mandate.

There is a constitutional law professor I am familiar with who leans on the conservative side. He rarely discusses his work with his young children. But the health care case has generated such attention that his 8-year-old son asked him about it. The father explained that the case involved whether the government could make people buy health insurance. This is what his 8-year-old son said: ``They can't do that. This is a free country.'' So even 8-year-olds understand the overreach of health care reform.

Unlike the supporters of ObamaCare, who really never bothered to think through the law's constitutionality before passing it, most Americans understand that this law threatens our freedom unlike any previous law. And I expect that the Supreme Court will agree. They understand that the law is not compatible with the Constitution and must be struck down.

It is ridiculous to claim that striking down this law would be judicial activism. A ruling that ObamaCare is unconstitutional would recognize that the law departed from the text of the Constitution, the very structure of our federalism, and even against the history of our country.

As former Judge McConnell has written, judicial activism cannot be defined one way when the meaning of actual constitutional text is at issue and another way when the words of the Constitution are silent on questions such as same-sex marriage and abortion. This is what Judge McConnell wrote:

[T]here cannot be one set of rules for liberal justices and

another set for conservatives.

By threatening the Court in advance, the critics are showing that they now have real doubts that the health care reform bill is constitutional. Whether addressed to an individual Justice or to the Court as a whole, claims that only one possible result can be reached or the Court's ruling would be illegitimate are shockingly improper attempts to influence a pending case.

But all the Justices seem to have agreed to combat what they see as any threat to their judicial independence. I suspect that inappropriate attempts to influence the Court's decisions on pending cases will backfire. They will make the Justices more determined than ever to show that they are adhering to their oath to defend the Constitution without regard to popular opinion. They will never want their rulings to appear to have been the result of political browbeating. So let the

Justices undertake their proper responsibility in deciding the constitutionality of health care reform. Let them do it without threatening to pillory them in advance if we do not like the outcome. There is always time for reasoned criticism after any ruling and particularly this ruling.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, since we are talking about farm legislation as well as nutrition legislation, I think I should be very transparent when I talk about this and talk about my background and lifetime in farming. I don't want to say something about farm bills and then have people who don't know where I am coming from find out later that I am a farmer and might benefit from some of the farm programs. So in the vein of transparency and accountability, I will just say that since 1960, when my father died, I have been involved in farming. Since 1980, I have been involved with my son Robin renting my farmland, farming with what we call in Iowa 50 50 farming. Others might call it crop share. Basically, that means that he and I are partners, and I pay for half the expenses, and I get half of the crop to market, and he gets the land rent-free. When you are crop-sharing or when you are 50 50, that means I am not an absentee landowner collecting cash rent, that I have risks. With risks, you assume that maybe you might get a crop or not get a crop, and if you don't get a crop, you don't get your rent as a landlord. It is the same for my son. He has risks as well. If he doesn't get a crop, he won't have to pay rent, but he isn't going to have anything to live on if he doesn't have a crop. So that is kind of the situation I have been in since 1960 when I was farming on my own and then in partnership with my son.

In the last 7 or 8 years, we have had a grandson, Patrick Grassley, who is a member of the State legislature, join our farming operation, and what I found out, with having a grandson in the farming operation, they don't have a lot of work for a grandfather to do. So last year about all I did was fall tillage with what we call in Iowa chisel plowing.

With that background, I want to go to my statement.

Growing up on my family farm outside of New Hartford, IA, where I still live today, I grew to appreciate what it means to be a farmer. The dictionary defines a farmer as ``a person who cultivates land or crops or raises animals.'' But that definition doesn't come close to fully describing what a farmer is. Being a farmer means someone willing to help a cow deliver a calf in the middle of the night when it might be 5 degrees outside. A farmer is someone who is willing to put all of their earthly possessions at risk just to put a bunch of seed in the ground and hope the seed gets rain at just the right time. Farmers work hard cultivating their crops and get the satisfaction of seeing the result of their hard work at the end of each crop season. They take great pride in knowing they are feeding this Nation. A farmer in Iowa produces enough food to feed 160 other people. So obviously we export about one-third of our agricultural production.

Farmers tend to be people who relish the independence that comes with their chosen profession. They are people with dirt under their fingernails, and they also work very long hours. Often they are underappreciated for what they do to put food on America's dinner table, and they receive an ever-shrinking share of the food dollar.

At this point, I would speak about a fellow Senator. I won't name the fellow Senator, but he is from an urban State.

Throughout our years of service here, I like to say to him: Do you know that food grows on farms?

And he says: Oh, does it?

Well, the other night at the spouses' dinner we had, he came up to my wife and he said: I know food grows in supermarkets, but Chuck thinks it grows on farms.

So that is the sort of camaraderie we have around here on agriculture, and I am very glad to have it.

I always say that agriculture is probably a little easier in the Senate because I believe every Senator, even in Alaska, Hawaii, and New Hampshire, represents agriculture to some degree--maybe not as much as in the Midwest, where I come from, or California or Texas, but every State has some agriculture, and there is an appreciation of it. In the other body, our House of Representatives, I don't know an exact figure, but I would imagine that there are probably only 50 districts that really are agriculture-oriented districts and the rest of them are very urban or suburban. So we have an understanding of agriculture and how important it is. When I talk about it, I don't mean to talk down to my colleagues, but I do think I understand agriculture. It is not to say that other Senators don't understand agriculture, but I think if you have been involved in it for a lifetime the way three or four of us here in the Senate have been, it means a little more.

Farmers have chosen a line of work that comes with risk. It is a risk that is inherent in farming and often out of their control. The risk inherent in farming is why we have farm programs.

If I may digress a little bit here, from memory, just to show how there are a lot of issues with agriculture that are beyond the control of farmers--I am not just talking about natural disasters such as hail or drought. In 1972 Nixon wanted to get reelected so bad that he froze the price of beef. It was only for a short period of time, maybe 3 or 4 months, because they found out it was not working the way he wanted. He didn't care about the farmers. Iowa was No. 1 in beef production up to that time. After that, everybody got squeezed out of the beef business because of the freeze. We went from No. 1 down to No. 13. Now I think we are about fifth or sixth in the production of beef.

Another example is when soybeans were being exported and they got up to $13 a bushel in 1973 or 1974--let's see. I am just trying to think. It was either when Nixon or Ford was President. At the time, one of them decided it was going to drive up the price of food in America, so they forbid the export of soybean. Soybean prices fell from $13 down to $3.

Another time, Carter decided that it was wrong for Russia to invade Afghanistan. At that time, we were selling them wheat, until the decision was made that we were not going to sell them any more wheat, so the price dropped.

I suppose I ought to think of things a lot more recent, but there are a lot of international politics that affect farming. Right now it is with Iran sanctions and oil. I am not sure to what extent that affects the price of energy, but agriculture is a big user of energy.

So what I am trying to say with just a few examples--and I ought to have more from memory--is that there are so many things that are beyond the control of farmers that if you ever wonder why we have a farm safety net, that is why.

Why do we have a farm safety net? For national security. As Napoleon said, an Army marches on its belly. We have to have food. Why do you think Japan and Germany protect their farmers so much today? Because they found in World War II that if they don't have food, they don't have very good national security. Or how long can a nuclear submarine stay underwater? Forever. Except if it runs out of food, it has to come up. Or what about the old adage of being nine meals away from a revolution? In other words, as a mother and dad, if you can't get food for your kids for 3 days, and they are crying, you might take any action to make sure they get food.

So I think having a secure supply of food is very essential to the social cohesion of our society.

We don't worry about that in America, do we? We go to the supermarket and the shelves are full, but there are a lot of places in the world where they don't have that. There are a lot of places in the world where they pay more than 50 percent of disposable income for food, and in America it is about 9, 10, or 11 percent.

So there are plenty of reasons to make sure we have a sound agricultural system in America, and we ought to make sure we take it seriously, both from a national security standpoint and for our social betterment.

If we want a stable food supply in this country, we need farmers who are able to produce it. When they are hit by floods, droughts, natural disasters, wild market swings, or unfair international barriers to their products, farmers need the support to make it through because so much is beyond the control of farmers. Most farmers I know wish there wasn't the need for a government safety net, but they appreciate that safety net when they do need it. For decade after decade, Congress has maintained farm programs because the American people understand the necessity of providing a safety net for those providing our food.

That is not to say that each and every farm program ever created needs to continue. In fact, there is a lot in this farm bill we have before us that brings reform, and some programs not reauthorized, that prove what I just said--that just because we have had some for 60 years doesn't mean we have to have them for the next 5 years in this farm program. Just as there are shifts in the market, sometimes public sentiment toward certain farm programs also shifts.

Take direct payments, for instance. There was a time and place for direct payments to help farmers through some lean years. But now times are OK in the agriculture industry, and the American people have rightly decided it is time for direct payments to end. With a $1.5 trillion deficit every year, it is also a reality that those payments can't continue from a budget point of view. So the Senate committee has responded, and we have proposed eliminating the direct payment program, and many farmers agree direct payments should go away as well.

There are other reforms the American taxpayers want to see. There is no reason the Federal Government should be subsidizing big farmers to get even bigger. I might repeat myself as I go through my statement, but I want to say that a farm safety net ought to protect the people who don't have the ability to get beyond these things that are beyond their control--whether it is domestic politics or whether it is a natural disaster or whether it is international politics or energy policies or all of the things that can happen.

There are some farmers who might not get over that hump because it is beyond their control--a problem that affects them financially. But there are some farmers who have that capability, and I think traditionally we have geared the farm program--not enough, from my point of view--but we have geared the farm program toward a safety net for small- and medium-sized farmers.

We have a situation where 10 percent of the farmers in recent years-- the biggest farmers--are getting 70 percent of the benefits of the farm program. There is nothing wrong with getting bigger. I want to make that clear. In fact, in agriculture, with the equipment costs a farmer has to get bigger, but the Federal taxpayers should not be subsidizing farmers to get bigger. It isn't just a case of a principle not to do that; it is the economic impact. When we do that--provide the government subsidy to the big farmers--they go out and buy more land, which drives up the price of farmland or drives up the cash rent in a particular area. Consequently, it makes it very difficult for young people to get started farming.

We want to be able--we have to pass this on to the young farmers. Many farmers understand that in order for us to have a farm program that is defensible and justifiable, it needs to be a program designed to help these small- and medium-sized farmers who actually need the assistance to get through rough patches out of their control.

So what I have been trying to do for years, and it was finally put in this farm bill, is to put a hard cap on the amount of money one farming operation can get so, hopefully, we cut down that 10 percent of the largest farmers that gets 70 percent of farm payments, so it is more proportional to the benefit of small- and medium-sized farmers. That is in this bill at $50,000 per individual and $100,000 per married couple for the payments under the Agriculture Risk Coverage Program. It is in this bill. I know to a lot of people listening that $50,000 and $100,000 is too much, and it is even too much for most Iowans. But there are some sections of this country, such as the South and West, where we will find our fellow Senators--I don't know how open they are going to be about this, but behind the scenes they are raising Cain about this $50,000 cap. I just about had this put in the present farm bill in 2008, except I had 57 votes, and we know how things work around here. We have to have 60 votes to get something done if people want to push the point. So I didn't get 60 votes. Now it is in the farm bill. I don't know who is negotiating around here on amendments, but there is going to be somebody trying to take this out of here--somebody from the South, I would imagine--trying to take this $50,000 cap out.

I expect to have the same considerations to this not being taken out by a 60-vote margin as I was kept from putting it in 5 years ago because if it had been put in 5 years ago, we would have saved $1.3 billion over that period of time.

Taxpayers are tired of reading reports about how so many nonfarmers receive farm payments. I have been working to get reforms on the farm payment eligibility for years, and just as the tide has turned on the status quo for direct payments, the tide has turned on program eligibility. The bill contains crucial reforms to the ``actively engaged'' requirements. These reforms will ensure farm payments go to actual farmers. The American people are not going to stand idly by anymore and watch farm payments head out the door to people who don't farm. In other words, if they aren't out there working the land--if they are on Wall Street or something and have farmland in the Midwest-- they shouldn't be collecting these farm payments.

There have been some people complaining about the payment limit reforms I have talked about. They complain it will detrimentally change the way some farm operations do things. Well, if they mean it will not allow nonfarmers to skirt around payment eligibilities and line their pockets with taxpayers' money meant for actual farmers, then the answer is, yes; that is what those reforms will do.

Let me make it perfectly clear. The reforms contained in this bill will not impact a farmer's ability to receive farm payments. Furthermore, the reforms will not affect the spouse rule. In other words, if the husband and wife are together in the farming operation, and some Senator comes around and says the spouse who is working beside the other spouse in this farming operation can't get the benefit of it, they are wrong.

These reforms reflect what we hear from the grassroots, which is Congress needs to be a better steward of the taxpayers' dollars. That is true if we are talking about farm programs or any other Federal program.

Those who are against these reforms are asking the American people to accept the status quo and to continue to watch as farm payments go to megafarms and nonfarmers. We cannot and will not accept the status quo. In other words, 10 percent of the biggest farmers getting 70 percent of the benefits of the farm program ought to end.

The Agriculture Committee should be proud of the improvements we are making to payment limitations in this bill. With these reforms we bring defensibility and integrity to this farm bill. In addition, it is probably the only bill that is going to pass this year that is going to cut any programs, and it is going to do that by $23 billion. In fact, without these reforms in the farm program, I wouldn't be able to support this bill.

I urge my colleagues to voice their support for these important payment limitation provisions and join with me in resisting any attempt to weaken these reforms, particularly from people in the Southern States who say somehow we ought to still continue to allow these megafarmers to get these millions of dollars of payments.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I came to the floor to talk about legislating. I was struck, in fact, by the comments recently because what I am here to talk about is essentially the yeoman's bipartisanship we have seen with Senator Stabenow and Senator Roberts on the farm bill. I am going to talk about some specific ideas, each of which I believe could win bipartisan support and help strengthen the legislation as we go forward in the Senate.

I believe it is hard to overstate the importance of writing the best possible farm bill in the Senate. When America desperately needs more jobs, and 1 in every 12 American jobs is tied to agriculture, this bill is an opportunity for the private sector to grow more jobs. When obesity rates are driving the American health care challenge, this bill can promote healthier eating without extra cost to taxpayers. When we are concerned about the threat to our treasured lands and air and water, this bill is our primary conservation program. When our rural communities are especially hard hit, and the Presiding Officer knows about this because she has a lot of rural country in her State, these rural communities are walking on an economic tightrope, and this bill can be a lifeline.

I spent much of last week in rural Oregon. In my State, Oregonians do a lot of things well, but what we do best is grow things--lots of things. Oregon grows more than 250 different crops, including everything from alfalfa seed to mint and blueberries. Several weeks ago, the Oregon Extension Service reported that agricultural sales in my home State increased more than 19 percent in 2011.

Agriculture in Oregon is now more than a $5 billion industry annually, and much of this is driven by high prices for wheat and cattle and dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and other specialty crops. The fact is, agriculture is the lodestar to prosperity for many rural Oregon communities. Nationwide, there are many other towns in a similar position to the small communities I have the honor to represent in the Senate.

That is what is apropos about this talk and the need for bipartisanship. Senator Schumer listed a number of these bipartisan areas. I consulted with the chair of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Stabenow, and the ranking member, Senator Roberts, who I also served with in the other body. After getting their counsel, I selected 28 Oregonians, from every corner of my State and across all types of agriculture, to help serve as an advisory committee on ways to improve the economic opportunities for Oregon, specifically through this bill.

We have the good fortune to have the committee chaired by Mrs. Karla Chambers, who owns a farm in the Willamette Valley, Stahlbush Farms, and also Mike Thorne, a wheat farmer in eastern Oregon.

From the outset, this advisory committee did not talk at all about politics, did not talk about whether there was a Democratic way to write a farm bill or a Republican way to write a farm bill. What they did talk about was the importance of the issues I have just outlined: jobs, health care, conservation, rural communities. That is what they spent their time focused on and particularly the jobs issue was central to their discussion.

There are about 38,000 farms in my home State which roughly support 234,000 jobs. That is about 11 percent of our State's employment. As much as 80 percent of the agricultural goods produced in Oregon are sold out of State. Half of that is exported to foreign countries. That is especially important to me because I chair the trade subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee. So what I have taken as the centerpiece of my approach to agriculture and to our country's economy is that we ought to do our very best to: grow things in the United States, to add value to them in the United States, and then ship them somewhere.

It is especially important for Oregon agriculture. As I just noted, 80 percent of the agricultural goods that are produced in our State are sold out of State.

Abroad, our producers are doing very well. Nationally, each $1 billion in agricultural exports is tied to approximately 8,400 American jobs. These growing overseas markets represent a

way to create and sustain good-paying jobs that rely on export sales. In fact, agriculture is one of the only sectors with a trade surplus, and in 2011, it boasted a surplus totaling $42.5 billion--the highest annual surplus on record.

That is why I was honored to have a chance--when Chairman Baucus was tied up in discussions with respect to the super committee--to manage a significant part of the debate on the three recently passed free-trade agreements, which again give us a chance, as I have indicated, to build on that proposition that I have outlined, where we grow things here, add value to them here, and then ship them somewhere else.

Nothing says that more than giving those opportunities to producers from Oregon to Florida. They sell their fruits and vegetables, their wheat, their beef, their nursery crops, and other high-value products at home and abroad. The farm bill continues those programs that American producers rely on to help market their goods in foreign markets. I think it is important again to stress the bipartisanship associated with making sure there are bountiful opportunities for American agriculture and particularly for Oregon agricultural goods.

The second area my agriculture advisory committee focused on was stressing the importance of healthy nutrition here at home. Of course, the USDA, our Department of Agriculture, has recommended eating five fresh fruits and vegetables daily.

What that means is that from Burns, OR, to Bangor, ME, farm programs need to make it easier for those with low incomes to be able to eat healthier. There never ought to be a tradeoff between health and affordable food. So I think we have to look at some fresh approaches to promote healthy nutrition in this country. I believe it is not just an economic threat to our economy, it is also a national security threat to our Nation because we have seen, regrettably, that many Americans who would like to wear the uniform of the United States, patriots, have not been able to pass the health standards necessary to serve in our military.

In the past three decades, obesity rates have quadrupled for children ages 6 to 11. More than 40 percent of Americans are expected to be obese by 2030. The Centers for Disease Control reports that in 2008 alone, the United States spent $147 billion on medical care related to obesity. Obesity is the top medical reason one in four young people cannot join the military, and it has been identified by the Department of Defense as a threat to national security. It doesn't have to be this way.

I wish to outline some specific ideas for changing that and to promote good health in our country without adding extra costs to taxpayers. One opportunity for change is through the Farm to School Program. Again, without costing taxpayers additional money, it ought to be easier for delicious pears, cherries, and other healthy produce, grown just a few miles down the road, to make it into our schools. This ought to be a national approach. Schools from Springfield, OR, to Savannah, GA, currently purchase their fruits and vegetables from USDA--the Department of Agriculture--warehouses, which may be hundreds of miles away. Many of our farmers and our producers would like to sell their goods to local schools, and many schools would like to source their produce locally. The farm bill ought to promote that.

When I was in Oregon last week, I had a chance to meet with the management of Harry & David. They are a major employer in my State, and an Oregon pear producer. They told me they want to sell their fruit to schools down the street, but instead a complex maze of Federal rules and regulations has created a hassle for them, and the process sounds like bureaucratic water torture. So I am going to offer an amendment that would make it less of a hassle for producers such as Harry & David and farmers to sell directly to local schools, all without spending additional Federal dollars.

A second opportunity to improve our Nation's health lies with the SNAP program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. This program currently spends over $70 billion a year. This is the big expenditure in the farm bill, and there is no way to really determine whether it promotes good nutrition. Think of all of the possibilities for helping our country, all the possible benefits if the SNAP program did more to improve nutritional outcomes for those who use the program.

Let me make clear that I am not for cutting benefits. I understand the crucial lifeline this program provides for millions of our people. What I am interested in doing is seeing that, through that $70 billion, it is possible to improve nutritional outcomes, all while getting the best value out of that enormous expenditure.

One of the ways we could do it would be to allow States to obtain a waiver from the SNAP program when they bring their farmers, their retailers, their health specialists, and their beneficiaries together and say: We have a consensus for improving the nutritional outcomes in our State, for those on the Food Stamp Program, the SNAP program. They ought to be able to get a waiver in order to do that and help us produce more good health in America. That is not some kind of national nanny program. That is not telling people they can only eat this or that. It is just common sense to have farmers, retailers, those on the program, and health specialists look, for example, to try to create some voluntarily incentive to promote better nutrition with this enormous expenditure, and I intend to offer an amendment to do that.

A third opportunity for improvement is through what is known as gleaning. Historically, gleaners gathered leftover produce from the fields, but today gleaners play a crucial role in reducing the staggering amount of food that goes to waste each year. At a time when food waste is the single largest category of waste in our local landfills--more than 34 million tons of food--again, without spending extra taxpayer money, we can do more to ensure that this unwanted food is used to tackle hunger in America.

Led by the dedicated work of local food banks, many are striving to put America's food bounty to better use. In Portland, OR, Tracy Oseran runs a wonderful nonprofit organization known as Urban Gleaners. They are poised to collect surplus food--hundreds of thousands of pounds of food--from grocers, restaurants, parties, and all kinds of social organizations, and they redistribute those hundreds of thousands of pounds of food to organizations that serve the hungry. Urban Gleaners is doing great work, but they could be doing a lot more.

Without spending a dime of extra money, we can advocate for gleaners all across America by making it possible for them to receive loans through the Microloan Program. If someone is trying to set up a gleaning program in a small town and they have to borrow, say, $20,000 to start a refrigeration program to preserve the quality of the food, let's make it possible for the gleaners to do that.

I am not proposing--and I discussed this with the chair of the committee, Senator Stabenow, and Senator Roberts, the ranking minority member--to allocate one additional dime to the program. I think it is a fine program. I simply want to say that when we have gleaners in our country who are telling us about the enormous amount of food that is still wasted despite their tremendous efforts, let's not pass up an opportunity to, with this bill, make it possible to promote gleaning in our country.

To produce the healthy food needed to feed America, we need fertile agricultural land, and conservation plays a central role in that. Roughly 28 percent of Oregon's land mass is devoted to agricultural production. Maintaining this land is crucial for our long-term productivity. For more than half a century, the farm bill has supported infrastructure modernization and conservation projects. They give, once again, the opportunity for collaboration, and that is key to our natural resources.

I see my friend from Arizona, Senator McCain, here. We talked about doing this in the forestry area years ago. We ought to be promoting collaborative projects to boost rural economies. It is the Oregon way, and we ought to build on that in this farm bill as well.

The time is also ripe to promote farmers markets and locally grown food, which will lead to greater awareness of local markets, roadside stands, and community-supported agriculture.

This farm bill expands those opportunities, and I think these types of local initiatives give us the opportunity to change the trajectory--the tragic and staggering trajectory--of obesity in this country, and to ensure the viability of these programs, the land required to produce nutritious foods must be addressed.

I plan to offer, as I have indicated in these comments, a number of amendments to the farm bill, each of which I have discussed with the chair of the committee, Senator Stabenow, and ranking member, Senator Roberts.

The farm-to-school amendment that I will offer would not spend additional taxpayer money, but it would make it easier for schools to purchase locally for the breakfast, lunches, and snacks they serve children.

My second amendment would allow States across this country to get a waiver under the SNAP program, so they can consult with their farmers, their retailers, their health specialists, and those who use it, and try to come up with a way to get more good health and nutrition out of the $70 billion that is spent on the program. States ought to have an opportunity to do that so that the SNAP program can be a launch pad for healthier eating rather than just a conveyor belt for calories. With a waiver, States with innovation and effective ideas could improve nutritional outcomes and put their good ideas into action.

Third, I intend to offer an amendment--again, it doesn't spend additional taxpayer money--to promote gleaning through the Microloan Program.

Finally, based on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, I will offer an amendment to make it possible to advance some of the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine to look at the relationship between agriculture policy, the diet of the average American, and how we can reduce childhood obesity. This amendment would give us a chance to advance the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine. They have made a number of thoughtful proposals that I think will give us a chance to reduce obesity and promote our national security, and we certainly should pursue them through this farm bill.

The last comment I will make is that I think Oregonians got it right, and I think we ought to be building on the work done by Senator Stabenow and Senator Roberts. At a crucial time in American history, this bill can help us grow more jobs, it can help us improve the health of the people of our country without spending additional money, and it is an opportunity to protect our treasured land and air and water. Finally, it is a lifeline for rural communities--these communities that I have described as walking on an economic tight rope.

I intend to work with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis. I have heard all this talk about how the legislating is over. We ought to build on the work that has been done already and get this important bill across the finish line because it will be good for our economy, for our national security, and it will be good for our health and for our environment.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the farm bill which is now before the Senate. As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I worked, together with my fellow committee members, on a bipartisan basis to put forward what we believe is a sound farm bill for this country. We passed the bill out of committee on a strong bipartisan vote, 16 to 5. So it comes to the Senate floor for deliberation. The bill is entitled ``The Agriculture, Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012.''

I would like to begin with just a simple question. Why is the farm bill so important? Why is the farm bill so important? I think the first chart I have sums it up. This is the most important point I will make today. I am going to begin and I am going to conclude my comments with it as well. U.S. farmers and ranchers provide the highest quality, lowest cost food supply in the world. Our farmers and ranchers today provide the highest quality, lowest cost food supply in the world.

Not only do they provide the highest quality, lowest cost food supply in the world, but in the history of the world. That is vitally important to every single American. So when we pass a farm policy that supports our network of farmers and ranchers throughout this great country, we are doing something that makes a fundamental difference every day for every American and for millions of people beyond our borders.

There are other aspects to the farm bill that are very important as well. For example, we have a tremendous number of jobs in farming and ranching across this country--every State in this country, throughout our heartland and beyond. There are not just direct jobs in farming and ranching but there are indirect jobs, from food processing to retail, to transportation, to marketing--you name it. We could say it is an incredible jobs bill, which it is. There is no question about it. When we provide a good, sound, solid farm program for our farmers and ranchers, we are also very much passing a jobs bill as well.

We can also talk about it in terms of a favorable balance of trade. The United States has a deficit in its trade balance, but agriculture has a positive balance of trade. We export millions in food products all over the world to feed hungry people, and it generates a positive return for this country in a big way.

We can talk about it in terms of national security. Think about how important good farm policy is for national security. We produce not only the food we need, but far more than the food we need for our citizens, we provide food for many citizens in other countries as well. Think about the national security implications if we had to depend on other countries for our food supply--maybe even countries that don't necessarily share our interests or values, which is currently the case with energy. We certainly don't want to be in that situation when it comes to feeding our people. So it is truly an issue of national security. We want to be in the position to make sure we have farmers and ranchers who will supply not only the food we need in this country but food that people consume in many countries throughout the world.

For all those reasons this is an incredibly important bill. It is not just incredibly important to farmers and ranchers, it is incredibly important for every single one of us--for all those reasons and more.

The second point I want to make is this farm bill is cost-effective. It is not only cost-effective, but we provide real savings to help to reduce the deficit and the debt. It provides strong support to our farmers and ranchers, but it does it the right way. It does it in a way where we provide savings that will go to reduce the deficit and debt. Our farmers and ranchers are stepping up and not only doing an amazing job for this country in terms of what they do in food supply and job creation, but they are helping meet the challenge of our deficit and debt as well.

The second chart is an example of what I am talking about in terms of the farm program being cost-effective. I will use this and several other charts to go into the actual numbers to show that the farm program--particularly this bill we have crafted--is not only cost- effective, but it provides real savings as well. At the same time, it provides enhanced support for our farmers and ranchers throughout the country.

Looking at the chart, if you think of the total Federal budget as this cornfield, the portion that goes to the farm bill would be similar to this ear of corn out of the cornfield. If you think of the total cornfield as the Federal budget, the farm bill would be about one ear of corn. The portion of the farm bill that goes to farmers and ranchers to support what they do would be one kernel of corn out of the entire cornfield. To put those numbers into perspective--and these are analyzed numbers--you are talking about Federal spending of about $3.7 trillion, in that range. You are talking about a farm bill that, on an annualized basis, is about $100 billion. So it is $100 billion out of $3.7 trillion. Then if you talk about the portion that actually goes to support farmers and ranchers and support that network, you are talking about less than $20 billion out of $3.7 trillion. That is why I use this frame of reference.

If we go to the next chart, we will go into some of the numbers and how that funding is broken out in the farm bill itself. This pie chart shows the CBO scoring. Of course with any legislation you need the CBO scoring that shows the actual cost. We try to do that in a consistent way across all of the legislation we pass. CBO uses a 10-year scoring period. On that basis, this entire pie, the farm program score, over a 10-year period is $960 billion. Of that, almost $800 billion is nutrition programs. Almost 80 percent goes to nutrition. I mean by that, primarily SNAP, nutritional assistance payments, or food stamps. So nutrition programs comprise 80 percent of the total cost in the farm bill.

Only about 20 percent actually goes for farming and ranching, for farm programs, and for conservation. So in the scoring, that is only about $200 billion. We know the bill is not a 10-year bill, it is a 5- year bill. So the actual cost is $480 billion, or half of the score. That means approximately $400 billion goes for nutrition programs, food stamps, and so forth; and less than $100 billion goes for farm programs and conservation programs. So we are talking about an annual cost of this farm program--a program that supports farmers and ranchers who feed this country and much of the world--of about $20 billion--actually less.

Let's go to the next chart on how the program actually provides savings, how farmers and ranchers are providing real savings for deficit reduction in this country. This bill saves more than $23 billion--$23.6 billion is the savings generated by this farm bill; $15 billion comes from the farm programs themselves; $6 billion comes from conservation programs; only about $4 billion comes out of nutrition programs. So 80 percent of the cost in the bill is nutrition programs, which is $400 billion over 5 years. Only $4 billion comes out of the nutrition programs; close to $20 billion comes out of the agriculture portion of the bill. Going back to my prior chart, if you go back to the crop insurance provisions and commodity,

which comprise the farm support network, that is about $150 billion in the CBO scoring. Remember, I said $15 billion comes out of that $150 billion. My point is that 10-percent reduction. So farmers and ranchers are stepping up in the farm bill and saying, OK, we are going to help meet the deficit and the debt challenge. They are, in essence, taking 10 percent less.

Think about that, if throughout all aspects of the Federal budget everybody stepped up the way farmers and ranchers are in this legislation and said, OK, here is a 10-percent reduction we are going to take to help get the deficit under control and the debt under control. My point is, very clearly, in this legislation we have real savings, and that savings is being provided by our farmers and ranchers.

At the same time--this is my third point, and it is very important-- this farm bill provides the kinds of support our farmers and ranchers need by providing the risk management tools our farmers need. This farm bill provides strong support for our farmers and ranchers, and it does it the right way. It does it right, with sound risk management tools. What are those risk management tools? I have them here on the chart. It enhances crop insurance. Second, a new Agriculture Risk Coverage--or ARC--Program. It includes also reauthorization of the no-net-cost sugar program. It improves and extends the livestock disaster assistance program. These are the kinds of risk management tools our farmers and ranchers have asked for. They are cost-effective and a market-based approach. They provide the sound, solid safety net our farmers and producers need to continue to produce the food supply for this country.

I will go into more detail on the next chart on crop insurance. As I travel around the State, and as myself and others who are members of the Ag Committee travel the country, one thing our farmers and ranchers say to us over and over again is that they want enhancements to crop insurance. We worked on the safety net for our farmers, and as we worked on the tools for them, they said the heart of the farm bill needs to be enhanced crop insurance. That is exactly what we have done with this legislation. That is the heart of the bill.

Enhanced crop insurance involves a number of things. First, farmers can buy individual crop insurance, and do buy it, at whatever level they deem appropriate. They look at their farm operation and decide how much crop insurance they are going to buy to cover that farm operation. But as they insure at higher levels, the cost to buy that insurance gets more and more expensive. One of the things we tried to do in terms of enhancing crop insurance is figure out how we can help insure at a higher level at an affordable price. That is one of the new innovations. It is called the supplemental coverage option, or SCO. It enables farmers to insure or cover their farming operation at a higher level, but still at an affordable price.

The way it works is, the farmer buys his normal, individual, crop insurance that he would normally purchase. But then, in addition, on a countywide basis, he can buy supplemental coverage, with the supplemental coverage option, on top of his existing insurance. If he typically insures up to, say, 60, 65, or maybe a 70-percent level, he can buy additional insurance on top of his regular policy at a reasonable premium. His regular policy is an individual, farm-based policy, and this is a county-based policy that provides additional coverage at a reduced rate--again, management tools on a market-based approach to cover their farming operation.

The second innovation on the next chart is a program called Agriculture Risk Coverage, or ARC. Very often, farmers--obviously, one of the challenges they face is due to weather. When they face weather challenges, oftentimes we can get in a wet cycle or a dry cycle. So the problem they have with weather may not be limited to one year. You may have a number of years where they face real weather challenges.

In addition, what may happen is that it may trigger losses in their farming operation that are not severe enough to trigger their regular crop insurance, but still cause them losses. You can have repetitive or shallow losses. Over time, those can make an incredible difference in terms of farmers being able to continue in farming and continue their operation. We add shallow loss coverage, or the agriculture risk coverage, to help them protect against these repetitive losses, which they often face due to weather conditions. That is the agriculture risk coverage. It covers between 11 and 21 percent of historical revenue.

How do you calculate that percentage? That is a 5-year average--the last 5-year average--based on price and yield, the revenue they generate on their farming operation. You take out the high year and the low year, and you average the other three. The way it works is, when you have a year where the farmer's crop insurance may not trigger, they still have help when they have a loss, but a loss that may not trigger on their crop insurance. In other cases, it works with their crop insurance to make sure they are adequately covered so they can continue their farming operation. Again, an enhanced risk management tool, cost- effective, focused on a market-based approach to make sure our farmers and ranchers have the coverage they need to continue their operation.

One other point I want to make in wrapping up is that this bill also continues strong support for agricultural research. Agricultural research is making a tremendous difference for our farmers in terms of what they are doing to increase productivity. Obviously, we all know technology has done amazing things to help productivity. But at the same time, agricultural research has made an incredible difference in not only food production--productivity when it comes to food production--but energy production as well.

So that is it. That is how this legislation works. It provides strong support to our farmers and ranchers. It provides that support on a cost-effective basis. The bill emphasizes a market-based approach, focused on crop insurance, which is exactly what producers have told us they want. At the same time, this legislation provides real savings-- $23.6 billion--to help reduce the Federal deficit and the debt. It is bipartisan, and it received strong committee support.

I know some of our southern friends are still looking for more help with price protection, and we are working with them. It is likely the House Agriculture Committee will seek to do more in that area as well. But this is legislation that we need to move forward. This is legislation that supports our farmers and our ranchers the right way as they continue to provide--and I am going to go back to my very first chart--support our farmers and ranchers as they provide the highest quality and the lowest cost food supply for every single American.

As I said, this is where I started my comments, and this is where I will conclude. When we are talking about a farm bill, we are talking about something that is important to every single American--every single American. We do it the right way here, and I ask all of my fellow Senators on both sides of the aisle--we worked together in a great bipartisan way in the committee--to work together in a great bipartisan way on the Senate floor and pass this bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 415, S. 3240.

Mr. President, we are now on the motion to proceed to the farm bill.

Mr. President, the time until 10:30 a.m. will be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees. At 10:30 a.m. there will be a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the farm bill. We hope we can reach agreements on the amendments today.

The hour following the cloture vote will be equally divided, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half.

Mr. President, here we are again on these endless, wasted weeks because the Republicans are preventing us from going to legislation. We should have been legislating on this bill. This is a bipartisan bill. It is managed by two very good Senators. One is a Democrat, Debbie Stabenow, chairman of that committee, and Pat Roberts from Kansas, who in the past has been chairman of the committee and is ranking member of the committee today. They have come up with a very good bill. It saves the country $23 billion. It gets rid of a lot of wasted subsidies. It is a fine piece of legislation.

We hear the hue and cry constantly from our Republican friends to do something about the debt. This bill does it. It saves the country $23 billion. We are going to have a cloture vote on the ability for us to proceed to the bill, and on the ability for us to start legislating.

I don't need to give a lecture to the Presiding Officer about how vexatious this is, that we have to do this every time. The Presiding Officer wanted to do something to change this process at the beginning of this Congress. I will bet, Mr. President, if we maintain our majority--and I feel quite confident we can do that and the President is reelected--there are going to be some changes. We can no longer go through this on every bill. There are filibusters on bills they agree with. It is a waste of time to prevent us from getting things done. So enough on that. It is such a terrible waste of our time.

Measures Placed on the Calendar--S. 3268 and S. 3269

Mr. President, there are two bills at the desk due for a second reading.

Mr. President, I would object to any further proceedings with respect to these bills, en bloc.

Mr. President, would the Chair announce the business of the day.

Reservation of Leader Time

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Chair start calling the roll, with the time equally divided.

How much time does the Senator need?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Alabama be recognized for another 5 minutes.

Mr. President, the last Congress was the most productive in the history of the country. Some say not the most productive, but certainly no one disagrees that it is the most productive since Franklin Roosevelt was President during his first term. But since there is a new majority in the House, this Congress has been altogether different and that is an understatement.

Consistently this Congress has taken weeks or months to pass even simple, commonsense legislation and proposals that would have previously passed in minutes. The Senate has wasted literally months considering bipartisan bills only to have those bills smothered to death under nonrelevant Republican amendments.

Congressional Republicans have held even the most important jobs measures hostage to extract votes on unrelated ideological amendments-- despite the minority leader's own call to ``stop all the showboats.'' Those were his words.

The Democrats and American people have endured this blatant obstruction all year--in fact, for 18 months. What is it we are talking about? Obstruction. If you look in the dictionary, it says it all. I did that this morning. The dictionary says that obstruction is a condition of being clogged or blocked. Doesn't that define what has happened here in this wonderful body we call the Senate? Republicans have clogged or blocked everything we have tried to do, even things they have agreed on.

Yesterday we read that we will have to endure it every day for the rest of the year--every day for the rest of this Congress. And this came from Congressman Cantor, the No. 2 person in the Republican- dominated House of Representatives. House Republican leaders admit they have given up on actually running the country. Despite the work that remains to keep our country on the right track and continue 27 months of private sector job growth, they say they are done legislating for the year, and in spite of the fact the President is working to create 4.3 million private sector jobs.

But listen to this report from the political publication Politico yesterday, and I quote:

Serious legislating is all but done until after the

election . . . The rest of this year, Cantor said, will

likely be about sending ``signals. . . .''

Let's try that again. Because it is hard to comprehend that someone who is supposedly running the other body would say such a thing, but he did.

Serious legislation is all but done until after the

election. The rest of this year, Cantor said, will likely be

about sending ``signals. . . .''

So rather than work with Democrats to strengthen our economy and create jobs, congressional Republicans will put on a show designed to demonstrate the extreme ideological direction in which they would lead this country.

Majority Leader Cantor's candor is frightening. He said out loud what practically every Republican on Capitol Hill has been thinking all along: They care more about winning elections than creating jobs. We just don't usually hear them say so in public when reporters are listening.

Just a short month ago, Speaker Boehner urged Congress ``to roll up your sleeves and get to work.'' To an audience of conservatives, the Speaker said, ``We can't wait until after the election to legislate.''

Less than a week after, he said Leader McConnell urged us to ``stop the show votes that are designed to fail. Let's stop the blame game. Let's come together and do what the American people expect us to do.''

The statements of Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell are Orwellian. They do exactly the opposite of what they say.

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, by all means a moderate Senator, who is retiring amid frustration of increasing partisanship in Washington, wrote to me in April to urge quick Senate action on many of the challenging issues facing us. It was a letter crying out for help-- but not for help from us, not for help from Democrats. She was speaking to the Republicans. She knew they were holding up virtually everything we were trying to do. I am sure that is one reason this fine woman is leaving the Senate.

Leader Cantor's remarks provide a window into the true Republican agenda. It seems when congressional Republicans forget the world is watching, they say what they really mean. They are more interested in putting on a partisan sideshow than in solving the real problems facing this Nation. In truth this comes as no surprise. It is just more of the same.

Republicans have launched a series of attacks on access to health care for women, even contraception, and have filibustered legislation to ensure American women get equal pay for equal work.

In my desk--I haven't used this in a while, but I knew it was here all the time. Filibuster, filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. That is what obstruction is all about. ``Filibuster,'' from the dictionary:

One of a class of piratical adventurers who pillaged the

Spanish colonies in the West Indies during the 17th century;

one who engages in unauthorized and irregular warfare against

foreign States; a pirate craft.

Now, it is also defined as:

To obstruct progress in legislative assembly; to practice

obstruction.

That is what they have done. They have filibustered legislation to ensure American women get equal pay for equal work. Who could be against that? The American people--if we take a poll, no one is against it. Republicans aren't against it, except Republicans in the Congress of the United States.

They have stopped us from restoring fairness to the Tax Code to ensure billionaires don't pay a lower tax than middle-class families. They put women at risk by holding the Violence Against Women Act in limbo. They blocked a bill to hire more teachers, cops, firefighters, and first responders. They have stalled important jobs measures such as the aviation bill. We had 22 short-term extensions of that.

Finally, they shut down the government on one occasion--the government as it relates to the Federal Aviation Administration-- putting tens of thousands of people out of work. They have stalled for months and months work done on a bipartisan basis by two fine Senators: Senator Boxer, the chairman of that committee, and Senator Inhofe, the ranking member. It doesn't matter. They are stalling the highway bill. Millions of jobs. We can't get it done.

For months, congressional Republicans have actively worked against any piece of legislation that might create jobs or support economic growth. We don't need to take my word for it, just look at the record. Democrats have known all along that congressional Republicans' No. 1 goal isn't to improve the economy or to create jobs. It is to defeat President Obama.

People say: Oh, come on. You don't really mean that, do you? I mean every word of it. Here is why: The leader of the Republicans in the Senate said it. I didn't make it up. The minority leader, the senior Senator from Kentucky, said so plainly in another one of those moments of candor. Here is what he said:

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for

President Obama to be a one-term President.

He said that in October of 2010 when this country was mired in monumental challenges, rather than saying let's work together and do some things. How many jobs could we have created if we had some semblance of help from the Republicans in Congress? Not 4.3 million jobs. Remember, 8 million or 10 million were lost in the Bush administration. We have struggled to get some of them back. We could have created millions more jobs just with a little help, but here is where they are headed. They are headed toward doing everything they can, no matter what it takes, to try to make President Obama a one-term President.

We are fighting back from the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Yet Republicans' top priority hasn't been to create jobs; their top priority wasn't to help businesses to grow and to have people hire workers. It wasn't to train the next generation of skilled employees or to hire more cops and firefighters or to put construction crews back to work building those roads and bridges we need. We have 70,000--not 7,000--70,000 bridges that are in trouble in this country. They need help.

We have a bridge in Reno, NV, where they will not have the kids stay on the schoolbus. They take them out, drive the bus over the bridge, and have the kids walk across the bridge. That is not the only place; all over the country that is happening. But we are getting no help. No, that wasn't their top priority, to help create those construction jobs. It was to drag down the economy in the hopes of defeating President Obama. Thanks to Leader Cantor's candor, today we know Republican priorities haven't changed one single bit.

I appreciate very much the wonderful statements by Senators Durbin, Schumer, and Murray. We have a problem in this country based on what Cantor said. Here are the headlines: ``Congress switches from policy to politicking.'' All we have said here today has been based on fact. That is too bad. It is too bad we have someone who is running the House of Representatives who is trying to kill these important pieces of legislation Senator Schumer outlined that we have passed over here. We have passed all these things, worked very hard to get them done.

Because of politicking, and not policy, the majority leader of the House of Representatives is killing all this legislation for reasons we all understand.

Order of Procedure

Madam President, cloture has been invoked on the motion to proceed to the farm bill by an overwhelming vote of 90 to 8. Senators Stabenow and Roberts are now, as we speak, working on an agreement to amendments to the bill. I am hopeful they can make significant progress over the weekend. There will be no more rollcall votes today. Monday at 5:30 we will have a vote on Andrew Hurwitz to be a Ninth Circuit judge.

I hope we can get the farm bill done next week and lock in an agreement on flood insurance, which is also vitally important to this country.

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