Crow Revenue Act

Mr. President, today's farmers across the country are facing significant financial losses for most commodities planted during the 2024 crop-year. It is a dire situation. Basically, they are in trouble.

I have been saying this for a while now: For the sake of American food security, national security, and rural prosperity, Congress must pass economic assistance for our farmers before the end of this year.

That is why I am asking Congress to pass a stand-alone economic assistance package for our farmers, no strings attached.

This isn't for the lobbyists, special interests, or liberal pet projects; it would go directly to the people who feed, clothe, and fuel the United States of America and the world.

It is for the American farmers who are desperate. They are in desperate need of help to survive. This economic assistance certainly won't help farmers make a profit. They have no chance. It won't even help them break even.

Right now, many farmers won't be able to secure financing and renew

their operating loans to keep their farms running for another year. Again, they are in trouble. This funding would only help farmers cover part of the 2023 and 2024 losses for American producers.

For crops grown in my State of Alabama specifically, the expected losses this year are over $200 per acre. Cotton producers are in worse shape, with losses of approximately $373 per acre. Peanut farmers' losses are next, at almost $198 per acre. Other crops, such as corn, soybean, and rice are also facing devastating financial losses.

These losses are occurring after farmers have produced bumper crops, which have yielded some of the best crops producers have seen in many, many years.

This indicates that a major economic disaster is looming for our producers and our country. If this dire situation continues, the American agricultural industry will face permanent--permanent--damage. American farming as we know it could cease--I repeat, cease--to exist.

Regardless of the region, State, crop, or weather pattern, there is one thing every farmer is subject to; that is, the law of economics. And right now, it is economic disaster for our farmers across this country and all States.

The math is simple. With production costs and interest rates at an alltime high, farmers' expenses are exceeding their profits. Under President Biden's leadership, cost for feed is up 22 percent; fertilizer, up 34 percent; fuel, up 30 percent. On top of that, labor is up 40 percent, and interest is up 54 percent on crop loans--54 percent. You can't make these numbers up.

Input costs are skyrocketing while commodity prices have plummeted-- absolutely plummeted--and are expected to continue falling.

According to the 2022 USDA agriculture census, our Nation has lost over 25,000 producers in just the last few years.

According to the USDA net farm income, this year is projected to decline 4.1 percent from 2023. This follows a shocking--listen to this--a shocking 22.6-percent decline from 2022 levels. These figures represent over $40 billion in lost revenue for America's hard-working producers.

No business--not one business--in this country can survive like this. Our farmers and our farms are no different. This is the largest 2-year decline in farm income in the history of this country--the history of the country.

In Alabama alone, we have lost nearly 2,000 producers and over 3,200 farms in just the last few years. This will cause farms to get bigger, not smaller.

The economies of scale will continue to push out small- and medium- sized growers, resulting in further consolidation of the agriculture industry. The little guys, in other words, they can't compete. We cannot allow these terrible trends to continue.

American farmers are rapidly approaching a steep financial cliff. Many will go off the ledge, never to recover unless Congress throws them a lifeline and pulls them back to safety.

This supplemental funding needs to happen in addition to a long extension of the farm bill. It has to be extended.

I continue to stand with Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Boozman in emphasizing the need to pass a strong farm bill with an adequate farm safety net in the upcoming Congress.

However, the truth is that even if we did pass a new farm bill--which would be improved, hopefully--containing increased reference prices for title I commodities, assistance would not reach farmers until October 2026. It will be a little too late for the farmers this year, for thousands of them.

Most farmers who wish to plant crops in 2025 need renewed access to credit before the end of this month. With many balancing checkbooks in the red--some for the second, third, and fourth year in a row--farmers will have a difficult time securing financing without improved certainty within the agriculture sector.

So while a 1-year farm bill extension is important, it does not provide the needed certainty for bankers and creditors to extend farm loans for this coming planting season. By failing to extend the adequate financial lifeline to farmers, now our farmers will--and I repeat--will not survive until the fall of 2026. It will be over.

It is a sad reality. At the end of the day, it is not their fault. They work 365 days a year, 7 days a week, and put their hard-earned money as well as borrowed money into their farms.

The supplemental assistance I am advocating for today will only serve as a bandaid to slow the bleeding until they get a farm loan and plant next season's crop.

I am hearing from producers all over Alabama and across the country about the dire state of the farm economy. Producers can't pay employees or their bills for seed, chemicals, and fertilizers. They can't pay it. I have never seen it this bad, never.

Lawsuits have already started--suing farmers for something that they don't have. Farmers have bumper crops of cotton, peanuts, corn, and beans. Yet they are still on the brink of bankruptcy. Something is wrong.

This isn't about commodity versus commodity or region versus region; it is about the survival of the American farmer and the communities that rely on them. It is about saving the hard-working men and women who play a critical role in feeding and clothing and fueling not only the United States but, folks, the entire world.

Congress cannot defy the laws of economics, but it can pass a stand- alone economic assistance package for our farmers to help them survive another year. This is perfectly within our power. There will be no funny business for this economic assistance, just a straight up-and- down vote to see who stands with our farmers, the food for this country, and the world.

Democrats always try to hold emergency funding for farmers hostage, like we have this year, and they want projects to go along with the funding, basically holding us hostage, holding these farmers who have worked hard and put their own sweat and blood into this crop that they have had.

Farmers from every corner of the country need us now, more than ever. There is not going to be another chance for a high percentage of this farming group that are farming this year--it is not going to happen-- which is why I am calling on the House and the Senate to put politics aside. I am begging: Put politics aside.

I wish I could have farmers standing up here today. They would be telling you the same thing. They don't like handouts. They like to work for the money that they make; they always have. That is why they are special. But they need a no-strings-attached economic plan.

I know President Trump will do everything he can in his power to assist American farmers when he is sworn into office. Our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, will deliver for our farmers as soon as she is sworn in. But until then, I ask the Senate to stand up and stand with an economic assistance package to throw our farmers a lifeline. They deserve it. They need it. And it is not just for them; it is for the entire country.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, last week, I came to the floor to speak

about a new acronym that we are becoming more and more familiar with-- DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency--that will be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. One of the priorities I am looking forward to working with DOGE on to accomplish, as a founding member of the caucus, is to reform and, hopefully, revitalize the Pentagon.

As I have said repeatedly, we are living in one of the most dangerous times since World War II. So it is absolutely critical that our systems at the Pentagon are operating in top-notch shape. But as we know, as of now, many of the acquisition processes the Pentagon follows are similar, if not identical, to those followed by the Soviet Union back in the day. If you know your history, the United States beat the Soviet Union when the wall fell and when the Soviet Union collapsed. So it is obvious that their model doesn't work very well, and neither did their system of military procurement.

But, as I mentioned last week, where and how we spend our money is just as important as how much we spend. We seem to be fixated on the ``how much'' but not how and where the money is spent. Preparing for the strategic competition we are in the midst of is not as simple as just increasing the percentage of the spending of GDP. We need to make sure that the money that is spent is spent efficiently and accurately, meeting the needs of the world--the dangerous world--we live in.

The end of the Cold War brought us a peace dividend, but one consequence of that victory was the overwhelming consolidation of the defense industrial base and the weakening of our supply chains. In the early 1990s, we had several hundred companies participating in our national defense industrial base. Today, we have five. The lack of competition in this area, combined with our penchant for requiring unique defense systems, has hampered our bargaining power and led to waste and abuse.

The use of cost-plus contracts shifts the risk of cost overruns to the government. As a result, it is not unusual to find projects delayed by years and running hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. Take, for example, undersea autonomous vehicles. Boeing was contracted to deliver five Orca vehicles for about $379 million in 2022. Yet here we are $620 million later with an anticipated delivery date of 2025. If we keep going at this rate, we simply will not be prepared for the confrontation from the authoritarian axis that is quickly coming our way.

But the good news is this story doesn't have to end the way the Soviet Union did. We are, after all, the United States of America, and I am optimistic we can learn from the mistakes other countries have made in the past to win this strategic competition with the axis of authoritarians. I am hopeful that by implementing reforms, we can pivot from the path we are on to one of peace through strength. Ultimately, the goal should be deterrence, preventing the next war.

The Pentagon should move away from cost-plus contracts toward reliance on fixed-price contracts. Under a fixed-price model, cost overruns are borne by the contractor instead of the buyer, which, in this case, is the Pentagon. This is just a commonsense best practice that should be the standard model to incentivize productivity and efficient operations. Newer, nontraditional defense companies like Anduril and Palantir, as well as Elon Musk's SpaceX in my home State of Texas, have made a strong case for this commonsense business approach.

These companies have leveraged billions of dollars in our capital markets, perhaps our greatest strategic advantage when compared to our adversaries, to produce quality defense items at unmatched scale and speed.

They also provide important and critical jobs across a variety of skill levels, often in a low-cost-of-living, high-growth opportunity area. This helps revitalize our towns and communities in need of new industries to reinvigorate their job markets.

This model underscores the need to transition away from our centralized, Soviet-style acquisition process, first created in the 1960s, to a more agile model which leverages the private sector to strengthen our national defense.

In addition to shifting our model for procurement and acquisition, we need to change the risk-averse culture at the Department of Defense. I don't mean taking unnecessary risks; I mean taking calculated risks where called for and where indicated.

Newer entities, such as the Defense Innovation Unit or the Office of Strategic Capital, are willing to assume greater risks since they understand the need for rapid acquisition. Their ability to identify and adopt commercial technologies, for example, is one area where procurement and contracting offices should be emulating. Rather than having the DOD create elaborate requirements with multiple overlays of bureaucracy and review, our officials should be looking for existing products and technologies that substantially meet the needed requirement.

The Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 actually requires these officials to do that. The fact that they are reluctant to do so underscores the need to reform the culture of acquisition and procurement.

While these are all needed updates that must happen, I am optimistic that the Pentagon can and will, with our help and encouragement, make progress in all of these fronts in order to be prepared for the challenges that our country faces ahead.

One reason I am optimistic is because of some of these reforms that are already underway as they have been included in the National Defense Authorization Act. And I am proud to have championed several of them.

Two of my bills included in the NDAA would enhance our procurement capabilities. One is the Capability-Based Trade and Unconventional Resource Engagement--or CAPTURE Act--which will create a pilot project permitting contracting officers to use alternative analyses to better determine the value of products produced by nontraditional defense contractors.

And then there is my Encouraging Qualitative Upgrades and Innovative Procurements--or EQUIP--Act, which will permit combatant commanders to use the defense modernization fund to procure commercial technologies.

Lastly, my Enable IC Partnerships Act will encourage public-private partnerships in acquisition and develop workforce talent. This will help address the lack of competition and innovation within the government and within the country.

These reforms, I believe, are a start, but our work is not yet complete.

I am confident that under new leadership, including that of Secretary-designate Hegseth, in collaboration with people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at the Department of Government Efficiency, we can continue and build on this process and make additional needed reforms at the Pentagon, again, with the goal of preventing the next war or reestablishing deterrence--something we have not done now, as evidenced by all of the hot spots around the world, ranging from the Middle East to North Korea to China to Russia.

I look forward to working with all of my colleagues and with each of these individuals to help them rebuild our military into the powerhouse that has long defined American strength.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I am all for considering bills that have gone through the regular process for consideration. In the past month alone, I have been on the floor several times to pass 12 bipartisan bills which advanced out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs with unanimous bipartisan support.

The difference with this bill is it is not ready. It is just not ready for that consideration, and Senator Daines knows that. The bill has not cleared the committee, and it is not for our lack of trying. It was only introduced a few months ago. And when it was fast-tracked to a hearing at the Senator's request, it was clear that there remained several open questions, and, as of today, many of those questions have still not been answered. And yet we are trying to pass this bill unanimously.

What is happening is that this would be recorded on the Senate floor as a 100-to-0 vote. This bill is not ready for that. The only circumstances under which--especially in Indian Affairs, but mostly in any other jurisdiction, the only way we pass something by unanimous consent is if it has been fully vetted and it is either so meaningless, right--a congratulatory resolution or something--and people just let them go; or it has been so thoroughly vetted that it is really ready and there are no objectors. That is not the case for this bill.

The Indian Affairs Committee has had its most productive years in history these past two Congresses, and we have done it through good- faith, bipartisan work and respecting not just, generally speaking, the process but the bipartisan tradition of the committee itself. We don't have one rule for some bills and another for others. Every bill that has made it through this process is scrutinized by the committee, with feedback from Tribes and others. And if it can be considered, it generally passes out on a bipartisan basis. Actually, our standard is to try to pass these things unanimously, not just one Member of one party and all the Members of the other party. We try to get zero ``no'' votes. If there are any ``no'' votes, it won't pass by consent on the floor.

We have done everything that we can to oblige Senator Daines and accelerate the consideration of this bill, but we cannot pass a bill that is still going through the process. The bill has no score. The bill has no score--something that has been required--sometimes to my chagrin--of every single bill that comes out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. I don't love that standard because sometimes I just want to pass a bill, and sometimes the score is so de minimis that I think it is a little bit of a waste of time. That is not the case for this bill. It is going to score, and we don't have that score yet. And I am not going to make an exception for one bill. It hasn't had a committee markup, and there is no path in the House.

The Senate hotline ran barely a day ago, and offices are still reviewing it. I want people to understand what that means. That means that offices that are not on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs are just getting emailed about this bill. For them, it is an issue of first impression. They are being asked to ask their boss: Do you vote yes on this bill that you haven't even analyzed? Do you vote yes on this bill, and there is maybe 2 days--maybe more but let's assume 2 days left in the actual Congress?

This is an attempt to circumvent our normal procedures. That is not how we do things here. For that reason, I object.

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

Madam President, with only days left in the 118th Congress, I come to the floor to fight on behalf of my rural Montana communities. S. 4444, the Crow Revenue Act, is a win for Montana, and it is one that cannot wait any longer.

The bill is pretty simple. It swaps minerals between the Crow Tribe, the Federal Government, and the Hope family and ensures that both the Crow Tribe and Musselshell County will continue to receive much-needed revenue from mineral development.

Let me be clear: If this bill does not pass and is not signed into law this year, there will be dramatic consequences for Montana communities. If we don't act before the end of the year, there will be 100 high-paying mining jobs lost in Roundup, MT. And unlike the show ``Yellowstone,'' where it looks like everybody has helicopters and fancy barns and fancy houses, this part of our State--and most of Montana--fights every day to make ends meet.

And, by the way, these 100 jobs that will be lost is after 700 jobs were lost at the Stillwater mine in Columbus, MT, a few months ago. We can't afford another layoff of hard-working miners.

Furthermore, both Musselshell County and the Crow Tribe will see cuts in their revenues, leading to fewer services for their communities.

The Crow Revenue Act is a long-term fix to a real problem that is happening in my State. It has the strong support of community leaders, county commissioners, the Governor, other locally elected officials, and, very importantly, the Crow Tribe.

I ask my colleagues to stand with me and support our rural and our Tribal communities.

Madam President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 4444 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the Daines substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.