A bill to extend agricultural programs beyond March 15, 2008, to suspend permanent price support authorities beyond that date, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 2745) to extend agricultural programs beyond March 15, 2008, to suspend permanent price support authorities beyond that date, and for other purposes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 2745, a bill to extend current farm programs until April 18, 2008. Mr. Speaker, our farm policies ensure that all Americans have access to safe, secure and abundant food supply while providing a safety net for American farmers and ranchers. It also authorizes important nutrition programs for our country's neediest citizens, encourages vital conservation programs and supports the development of agriculturally based renewable energy.

Mr. Speaker, all of us on the Agriculture Committee would rather have a new farm bill signed into law rather than be here today asking for an extension.

After hearing about the popularity of the 2002 farm bill from farmers and ranchers nationwide in a series of field hearings our committee held in 2006, we set out last year to build on a strong farm safety net while making new investments in rural America and for our Nation's neediest citizens who depend on Federal food programs for a square meal.

The new farm bill that this House passed last July makes those investments in nutrition, fruits and vegetable production and farm- based renewable energy. It reforms our farm programs and reinforces the strong farm safety net. It includes an agreement between industry and consumer groups on mandatory country-of-origin labeling for meat. All that progress will be lost if we do not get this bill finished and signed into law.

Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, we are taking steps toward a bipartisan, bicameral bill that Members can support. And I believe we have made enough progress in that endeavor to support a 1-month extension.

So, in closing, I would like to thank my friend and the ranking member, Mr. Goodlatte from Virginia, for his work over the last few months and for standing alongside me in working with the Senate and the administration in order to get this farm bill to a conclusion.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 2745, a bill to extend current farm programs until April 18, 2008.

Mr. Speaker, our farm policies ensure that all Americans have access to a safe, secure and abundant food supply while providing a safety net for America's farmers and ranchers. Farm bills also authorize important nutrition programs for our country's neediest citizens, encourage vital conservation programs, and increasingly support the development of agriculturally based renewable energy, which will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. Speaker, all of us on the Agriculture Committee would rather have a new Farm Bill signed into law rather than to be here today to ask for an extension. When the House Agriculture Committee kicked off the Farm Bill process in 2006 with Farm Bill field hearings all across America, we hoped a new Farm Bill for American agriculture would have been signed into law by now. Even though the farmers and ranchers we heard from in those hearings were strongly supportive of the farm safety net of the 2002 law, we knew passing a new Farm Bill would not be easy in this kind of budget environment.

Mr. Speaker, the Farm Bill has been a victim of its own success. The 2002 law saved taxpayers billions but resulted in a 60 percent cut in budget authority for traditional farm programs when budget baselines were released a year ago.

Nevertheless, the Agriculture Committee wrote a Farm Bill from the ground up; a new Farm Bill that makes historic investments in fruit and vegetable production, conservation, nutrition, and renewable energy while reinforcing the strong safety net for America's

farmers. The House-passed bill institutes mandatory country-of-origin labeling for meat. And despite what is said by editorial boards in big cities, this Farm Bill contains significant reforms that just a few years ago many people thought would be impossible to pass. We have eliminated the three-entity rule. We have implemented direct attribution of payments for transparency. And thanks to a hard cap on eligibility, millionaires will no longer be receiving farm payments.

The Senate passed their Farm Bill in late December, and staffs have been working hard ever since the New Year to work out many of the policy issues we will face once an overall funding level is reached.

Mr. Speaker, we are taking gradual steps to reaching a bipartisan, bicameral bill that everyone can support, and I believe we have made enough progress to support a 1-month extension.

Many people would like to see different things with this Farm Bill, but the truth is, Mr. Speaker, that all of the advances we have made in fruit and vegetable production, nutrition, conservation, reforming farm programs, and encouraging farm-based renewable energy will go out the window if we do not get this bill done and signed into law. The forward progress we have made over the last few weeks lead me to believe that we can get this done. Our farmers and ranchers expect us to finish a new farm bill for a new age of agriculture.

In closing, I would like to thank my friend and Ranking Member Mr. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia for his work over the last few months and for standing alongside me in working with the Senate and the Administration in order to get this Farm Bill to a conclusion.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 2745, the short- term farm bill extension that will extend some provisions of the 2002 farm bill until April 18. The other body passed the same provision this morning, and this body must pass this bill so both bodies can continue to work on conference negotiations.

Mr. Speaker, I would like nothing more than to stand before you today and report that we are on the brink of an agreement on the farm bill. However, progress on a new farm bill agreement has been painfully slow, and this process has become a source of frustration for me and my colleagues, and the chairman I know as well, as well as millions of rural Americans awaiting a new farm bill.

If we do not seek prompt and substantive action on the farm bill, I believe we must pursue a different course of action, because our farmers and ranchers have already waited too long. Interminable delays in implementing a new farm bill may not have real ramifications in Washington, but in rural America the effects are real, and they are substantial.

I appreciate the efforts of our committee chairman to try to keep this process moving. I know at times he has shared my frustrations. We all recognize the need for a new farm bill, and we continue to work toward completing a farm bill and getting it to the President for him to sign into law by April 18.

I urge my colleagues to support this farm bill extension to give us a little more time to try to overcome the budget obstacles that have been standing in the way of the farm bill finish line since last year.

We started this process together in a bipartisan fashion more than 2 years ago. We worked together in the committee to move a farm bill forward, but we have been hindered time and time again outside the committee by the fact that others in the Congress have failed to recognize the fact that this farm bill starts out $58 billion below the last farm bill in terms of what it will cost to continue the farm legislation forward. That is a great thing. That is a tremendous savings for the American taxpayer. But when we are trying to write a modern, forward-looking farm bill that encompasses changes in conservation, in nutrition, in energy, in specialty crops, and we are trying to reform the commodity title of the farm bill, we needed to have some additional resources.

The chairman and I went to the Budget Committee last year in a bipartisan fashion and asked for some money above the baseline, not $58 billion coming back to us, but $5 billion, $10 billion above that baseline, which still would have been a huge savings for the taxpayers and allowed us to write a farm bill inside the committee and bring it to the floor of the House without being dependent on another committee or another source. The same problem existed in the Senate.

The outcome has been that we have been spinning our wheels having to deal with other outside influences rather than getting the job done in the committee because of this funding not being available. We are going to have to look at some new alternatives if we don't get a breakthrough here in the next couple of days, because even this extension will expire very, very soon, and the time it takes to write a farm bill that encompasses a whole host of issues, from what goes on on the farm to all of our nutrition programs, to our environmental and conservation programs, to research programs for agriculture, to a whole host of other areas that are very, very important, not just to America's farmers and ranchers, not just to people living in rural America, but to every American consumer who depends upon our farm community to continue to provide the safest, most abundant, most affordable food supply in the world, and we will be working together.

I appreciate the chairman's working with me and with other Members on this side of the aisle to accomplish that goal. He has been tenacious in that effort. But we need to either move on, or we need to get the help that was promised a year ago to finally come to the committee so we can get the job done.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to S. 2745.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, there be no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, there has been progress made on a farm bill. We can't leave here without doing a farm bill. I think it is something we need to do. We worked hard. We have agreed on how much money it is going to take. I had a meeting yesterday with Senator Harkin and Senator Baucus on our side. They have had good working relationships with their counterparts, Senators Grassley and Chambliss. They are working well with their House counterparts. We have had a little setback because Chairman Rangel has been hospitalized. We were hopeful that he would be out today. In fact, we had a meeting scheduled today. But he is not going to be back to work today. That has slowed us up a little bit. But we all look toward doing a farm bill. It is something we need to do, and we are going to work very hard on a bipartisan basis, which is the only way we can have a farm bill.

Mr. President, let me add to the remarks of the majority leader that I, too, believe it is important to have a farm bill. It has been a challenging process, to say the least, for our negotiators, but they continue to make progress. I, too, am optimistic that we can get there. I think it is important to the country that we do get

there. This extension we just passed was regretfully necessary, but it doesn't lessen in any way the need to get a farm bill, a 5- or 6-year extension, depending upon what is negotiated. We are continuing to work along those lines and hope to get there.

I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials thereon on S. 2745.